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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78976 ***
+
+
+
+
+ [Illustration: “Her eye caught mine, and she ceased to dance.”]
+
+
+
+
+ THE
+ SHOW GIRL
+
+ BY
+ MAX PEMBERTON
+ Author of
+ “The Garden of Swords,”
+ “Sir Richard Escombe,” etc.
+
+
+
+
+ THE JOHN C. WINSTON COMPANY
+ PHILADELPHIA
+
+
+
+
+ [COPYRIGHT]
+
+ Copyright 1909
+ by Max Pemberton
+
+ Copyright 1908
+ by Max Pemberton
+
+ All Rights Reserved according to
+ the Copyright Laws of the
+ United States and Great Britain
+
+
+
+
+ [DEDICATION]
+
+ To
+ James Gordon Bennett
+ Hommage Reconnaissant
+
+
+
+
+ CONTENTS
+
+1. Being a letter from Henry Gastonard, of the Maison du bon Tabac at
+Paris, to his friend Paddy O’Connell, of Glendalough, County Wicklow
+
+2. The response of Paddy O’Connell, of Glendalough, County Wicklow, to
+his friend, Henry Gastonard, of the Maison du bon Tabac at Paris
+
+3. A letter from the same brief author addressed to the Reverend
+Arthur Warrington, of Beldon, Suffolk
+
+4. Henry Gastonard continues the story in a letter to his friend Paddy
+O’Connell
+
+5. Henry Gastonard writes to Paddy O’Connell telling him the story of
+a dinner and a challenge
+
+6. Being a telegram from Paddy O’Connell to his friend, Henry
+Gastonard
+
+7. A letter from the Rev. Arthur Warrington, of Beldon, Suffolk, to
+Mrs. Arthur Warrington at Porchester Terrace, Bayswater
+
+8. In which Paddy O’Connell, of Glendalough, writes to his sister
+Clara a full account of the duel between Henry Gastonard and the
+Captain Bernard d’Alençon
+
+9. Being a further instalment of the story from the pen of Paddy
+O’Connell
+
+10. Henry Gastonard writes to Paddy O’Connell a letter concerning his
+search for Mimi the Simpleton
+
+11. Henry Gastonard informs Paddy O’Connell of his probable return to
+London
+
+12. Henry Gastonard tells of a visit to his cousin, the Rev. Arthur
+Warrington, at Lowestoft
+
+13. The Reverend Arthur Warrington writes in all haste to his
+Solicitor, Mr. James Frogg, of Serjeant’s Inn, Strand
+
+14. Paddy O’Connell apologises for his silence
+
+15. “The Chimes” at Yarmouth, and what Henry Gastonard learned of them
+
+16. Henry Gastonard gives a further account of his meeting with Mimi
+the Simpleton
+
+17. Paddy O’Connell lays down the law
+
+18. In which we hear something of the Pageant at Lowestoft
+
+19. In which we translate a letter from Henry Gastonard, of the Maison
+du bon Tabac, at Hampstead, to Mimi the Simpleton, at Felixstowe
+
+20. In which Mimi replies to Monsieur Henry
+
+21. Being a telegram from Henry Gastonard to his friend Paddy
+O’Connell, of Glendalough
+
+22. Being a reply from Paddy O’Connell to Henry Gastonard’s telegram
+
+23. Paddy O’Connell shares the news with his sister Clara
+
+24. In which Henry Gastonard keeps his promise to Martha Warrington
+
+25. Containing certain instructions to M. Jules Farman, ex-agent of
+police at 4 (bis), Rue de Quatre Septembre, Paris
+
+26. Madame Mimi writes a letter to Paddy O’Connell
+
+27. Paddy O’Connell replies to Mimi’s letter
+
+28. The same author addresses Henry Gastonard at the Hotel Metropole,
+Brighton
+
+29. Henry Gastonard makes an urgent appeal to Jules Farman, of the Rue
+de Quatre Septembre, Paris
+
+30. Jules Farman sends to Henry Gastonard some account of his
+stewardship
+
+31. Henry Gastonard sends Paddy O’Connell some account of his labours
+in Paris
+
+32. In which Paddy O’Connell advised his friend Harry to pay a visit
+
+33. The Reverend Arthur Warrington thanks Paddy O’Connell for services
+rendered
+
+34. Henry Gastonard tells Paddy O’Connell of his visit to Madame Lea
+
+35. We meet the Marquis de Saint Faur and another old friend
+
+36. Paddy O’Connell writes a brief letter from Jack Straw’s Castle at
+Hampstead
+
+37. In which we hear of Henry Gastonard at the Pavilion Henry Quatre,
+in the town of St. Germain by Paris
+
+38. The Reverend Arthur Warrington rebukes his wife, Martha
+Warrington, upon a trivial account
+
+39. We hear of Paddy O’Connell in a letter to Martha Warrington at
+Cambridge
+
+40. A brief note from Jules Farman, in Paris, to Henry Gastonard, at
+St. Germain
+
+41. In which Henry Gastonard receives a summons from the Marquis de
+Saint Faur
+
+42. Paddy O’Connell hears that he may leave London, and is invited to
+take the first train to Paris
+
+43. Martha Warrington, being returned to her home, receives there a
+letter from the Château of Bougival
+
+44. Mr. James Frogg, of Serjeant’s Inn, receives an unexpected answer
+to an expectant letter
+
+45. Mr. James Frogg, of Serjeant’s Inn, passes on the unpleasant news
+to the Reverend Arthur Warrington, of Beldon, Suffolk
+
+46. The Reverend Arthur Warrington receives the news and makes some
+complaint of it
+
+47. Paddy O’Connell informs his sister Clara that he is detained in
+London upon business of some importance
+
+48. In which Henry Gastonard hears of Jules Farman again, and of the
+criminal known as Bedotte the valet
+
+49. Madame Lea d’Alençon has really nothing to say; but she says it
+charmingly as ever
+
+50. Mimi the Simpleton writes a brief note to Madame the Princess
+Hélène of Ilidze and we translate it
+
+51. Mimi and Harry write to Paddy and advise him of their approaching
+visit to Ireland
+
+
+
+
+ THE SHOW GIRL
+
+ CHAPTER I.
+
+ [Being a letter from Henry Gastonard of the Maison du bon Tabac at
+ Paris to his friend Paddy O’Connell of Glendalough, County Wicklow.]
+
+                                                 Maison du bon Tabac,
+                                                      May 15th, 1905.
+
+Dear Paddy,--You will have seen it in the papers, if papers still
+cross the pass to those ancient halls which enshroud the immortal
+glories of the clan O’Connell--but, my dear Paddy, you will have
+little idea of its meaning or be as far from the truth of it as Paul
+Delmet from a parson’s cassock or the Chevalier Honoré de Villefort
+from the castles in Spain which the entirely disinterested Baroness
+has lately bequeathed to him.
+
+I can hear your comments, your wisdom, can imagine your displeasure.
+What--a man who should be riding his hack in the Row, putting a yacht
+into commission at Cowes--or at the worst buying a thousand guinea
+motor-car to carry his friends from their creditors--this man living
+in a hovel at Montmartre, spending his money upon chansonniers,
+grisettes, cocottes and all that paste-board riff-raff which has made
+the Quat-Z-Arts famous wherever the American language is not spoken.
+This is what you say, my dear Paddy--this is what my beloved cousin
+Arthur is saying when he tells himself that in twelve months’ time the
+curtain falls upon the play, and he, the patron, walks off with the
+proceeds.
+
+Be sure that I forget this unpleasant truth whenever life will permit
+me to do so. The thought for to-morrow is not often the spectre at the
+feasts over which Marcelle presides, nor one which Mimi La
+Godiche--which is to say Mimi the Simpleton--long permits to remain in
+heads as empty as her own. I am to lose my fortune of seven thousand
+pounds a year if, at the mature age of twenty-five, I am not earning
+five hundred pounds a year by my own labour and talent. So be it,
+Paddy. Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we will dine. This fortune
+may carry some little sunshine even to the benighted halls of the
+Agile Wolf. I make no complaint of destiny--nor of Mimi La Godiche,
+whose friends robbed me of a trumpery cigarette-box which is again
+upon my table while I write this letter.
+
+I say that I make no complaint of destiny--why should I? Let me but
+open this window, upon which Gabriel de Math has drawn in the best
+French chalk an impassioned sketch of an empty champagne bottle--let
+me but open it and the world is at my feet--Paris of the golden domes,
+Paris of the dark eyes and the meaner streets--a great black Paris, a
+Paris of woods and gardens and river, of the mills which grind the
+grisettes’ corn, of the hives whence issue the noctambules and night
+hawks, whose prey has gossamer wings of greenbacks, whose morrow is
+never because of the eternal to-day. All this lies in the great bowl
+before me. I pour my fortune into the abyss and they strive for it far
+below, in a glitter of brass and spangles, in a flutter of white
+petticoats and silken hose and shirt fronts which would be better at
+the laundry. But none knows the truth--I am the mad Englishman who
+neither paints nor plays. And I am as poor as the rest of them--and
+God knows how poor that is.
+
+So, you see, Paddy, I have my consolations, and among others, as the
+papers have told you, the friendship of Mimi La Godiche. What a fine
+old cardboard tragedy they have made of it all! Did I not sally forth
+at midnight, armed with a blunderbuss and a scimitar to cut down the
+apaches who lurk beneath the shadow of la Galette? Did I not enter a
+café which the police are afraid to enter? and did not these strong
+hands drag therefrom the brave _fille_ who had returned my stolen
+diamonds to me and was in danger because of her honesty? News “fitting
+to the night,” upon my word, “black, fearful, comfortless and
+horrible.” Would for the sake of this Hector that it were the truth
+and nothing but the truth--but, my dear Paddy, there’s little of the
+truth in it at all, as these indentures shall bear witness. It’s as
+false as Fifine of the Alcazar, and not half as pretty.
+
+You will remember that I have known Mimi La Godiche for some three
+months now. She is a pretty, round-limbed blonde, with a mop of
+tousled hair, eyes full of “fair speechless messages,” the reticence
+of Cleopatra, the youth of Cupid, the devilry of the whole Rue
+Champollion in the shape of her bewitching neck.
+
+I saw her first at the Fête de Neuilly. She stood upon a platform
+with a strong man, a juggler and a clown; and when she sang I
+determined that she should come to the Quat-Z-Arts and sing to the
+Bohemians of the Butte. Montmartre gave her the cold shoulder. Can you
+wonder that an audience which has heard Odette Dulac sing “Je suis
+Bête” should decline to hear Mimi La Godiche warble “Toujours
+l’amour,” in a dress that makes her look like a kitchen-maid and a
+voice that would befit a Sunday-school? She came, she saw, she did not
+conquer. I offered to send her back to the lion-tamer, who is to her
+father, mother, uncle and brother--she declined the invitation,
+preferring to sit to Desmond Barrymore, the American, and not a little
+delighted to earn her bread at so light a task.
+
+Now, my dear Paddy, you must tell me, for by all the kingdoms of the
+grisettes, I swear that I do not know what my obligations to this waif
+and stray may be. Must I pose as the philanthropist of the books, and
+send her to a convent at Brussels or a finishing school at Brighton?
+Should I plod patiently beneath a soiled genealogical tree to discover
+if, in some remote slum of Paris, Lyons, or Marseilles, there may not
+be living a venerable kinswoman, perhaps newly released from prison,
+who will harbour her? Or shall I remember that the devil knows his own
+and will not forget her?
+
+I cannot tell you. She is earning an honest living with Desmond
+Barrymore, and will come to no harm there. Life and laughter and the
+light of cities are her whole existence. And imagine the talk of the
+Rue Pigalle repeated in the cloister or the argot Montmartrois at
+church parade in that “fayre town of Brighton!” It can’t be done,
+Paddy. I am the victim of my own enthusiasm, and Mimi will return to
+her lion-tamer no more.
+
+Meanwhile, there are the thieves. The papers have told you that I, a
+young English student, studying the sculptor’s art in the great
+ateliers of Montmartre, was robbed at the Quat-Z-Arts Ball of a gold
+and diamond cigarette-case worth a hundred pounds. At the best it is a
+half truth--at the worst an ignorant lie.
+
+None knows better than yourself, Paddy, the deserved fame of the
+Quat-Z-Arts Ball. Here America does not come, nor Sir Lord Moneybags
+enter. There is no ticket more prized in all Paris than a ticket for
+the Quat-Z-Arts; there is not a festivity in any ballroom in Europe
+more decently conducted for those who see eye to eye with these
+Bohemians of the Butte, and understand them. True, Venus in many
+shapes rides sky-high upon the gilded floats; you sup upon the floor
+from the contents of paper bags thrown down to you from the galleries
+above; but of the vulgar things to be done in London or New York by
+those who are merely vulgarian, you do none at all. So, my dear Paddy,
+I certainly did not lose my pretty cigarette-case (given to me, you
+remember, by old Bardon, the banker, for dragging his beloved
+“cheeild” from the Solent) at the Quat-Z-Arts Ball; nor would anyone
+outside a lunatic asylum puzzle his head to say where I did lose it.
+
+Perhaps it was in a cab on my way to the Abbaye de Thélème, that
+sordid supper-house of the Butte, to which one resorts in sheer
+despair of sleep and solitude; perhaps later on at the Capitol, to
+which, I remember, Mistress Mimi would be conducted with Amé Decroix,
+the poet; Honoré de Villefort, the Chevalier; and that bald-headed
+old rogue of a perpetual mendicant, Georges Oleander, who writes the
+revues. I neither know nor care; for my memories are of a night of
+life, and colour, and music; of a scene glittering with dresses and
+the pictures that great artists have given to their fellows--of music
+which should have moved the feet of every dancing faun that ever trod
+a pedestal--of wit and laughter, the veritable _elixir vitæ_.
+
+This is no psalm-singing screed that I write to you, Paddy, nor are
+you the man for the pæans of self-righteousness. I will confess
+without shame to certain _bons moments_. Though I am not, and never
+have been, the lover of Mimi La Godiche, there have been instants of
+the madness in which I have played a madman’s part.
+
+But Mimi neither misunderstands me nor is misled. Did I but drop the
+shabbiest of handkerchiefs, she would become my mistress to-morrow;
+but I have no intention of soiling fine linen in this way, nor do I
+contemplate such a charming _ménage_ as she would certainly disgrace.
+When I embraced her at the Quat-Z-Arts, the floats of my Lady Venus
+were already sky-high and the parquet a sea of billowy chiffon--but I
+did not do so to give her an opportunity of stealing my cigarette-case
+(as that old blackguard Georges Oleander will have it), nor will all
+the _avocats_ in Paris convince me that this was the moment of my
+loss. No, my dear friend, it was at the Abbaye, I repeat, and if not
+at the Abbaye, then at the Capitol.
+
+I am asking you to keep this fact in mind that what follows after may
+be better understood. You know me too well to suppose that I would
+have cried to high Heaven for the loss of a twopenny-halfpenny diamond
+box, or even be complaining of it to any man. But it was my misfortune
+to be asked for a cigarette out of that same by the prince and father
+of all beggars, Maître Georges Oleander aforesaid, and so, in a
+moment of surprise, I discovered the loss.
+
+What next is the tale, Paddy? You will guess it first time--that Mimi
+La Godiche had thrown her fair arms about me, not in an ecstasy of
+love or passion, but purely to pocket the case and enjoy the contents
+at her leisure. This I had from the Chevalier Villefort not a week
+ago. On Sunday I learned for the first time the true value of a
+mendacious tongue and what it may mean even here on the “mountain”
+whence you look down upon the domes of Paris.
+
+The scandal was everywhere. Remember that there is in Montmartre a
+great colony of artists, musicians and writers, not less honest, not
+less clean-living than the inhabitants of many a sanctimonious town in
+the country of your oppressor. These may esteem the marriage-tie
+lightly; but they hold love to be a sacred thing, and they would no
+more think of robbing their neighbour than of shooting the Pope.
+
+These had been good friends to Mimi La Godiche because of my
+patronage. But no sooner is the black word spoken than every door is
+shut upon her, skirts drawn aside, tables shifted, slander uttered in
+no mere whisper. They recalled her coming--the strong man of the Fête
+de Neuilly, the clown, the tights, the van, the vagrant’s life. A
+little more of it and they would have pushed her headlong over to the
+great congregation of grisettes, maquereaux and night-hawks who throng
+the cabarets of the Butte. In short, my dear Paddy, they would have
+made a criminal and something worse of her--and you know what that
+would mean among the savages of Montmartre. Let me tell you next how I
+have come to save her from such a fate--if it be but for the
+moment--for, as Richter has told us, woman is the most inconsistent
+compound of obstinacy and self-sacrifice with which we are acquainted.
+
+I have saved her. She is in this very room while I am writing this
+letter; but, Paddy, if she were to walk a hundred yards down the alley
+which has the honour to house me I would not answer for her life.
+
+To make this clear, let me return to the Sunday after “the crime” and
+to my own recreation upon that innocent day. A morning with Sabine
+Monterey and old Villefort upon the Seine at Poissy; lunch in a frock
+coat and glory with Lea d’Alençon at her apartment in the Avenue de
+Malakoff; then to Longchamp; a little dinner at Armenonville, and
+afterwards the long journey home, the steep climb to the Butte and the
+card-box house which permits me to look down upon the sails of La
+Galette.
+
+Why I went so far that Sunday night I cannot tell you. There is still
+my apartment in the Hôtel St. Paul open to me when I would return to
+civilisation. But I think the amorous Lea had put thoughts of Mimi
+into my head, and, wondering if all were well with her, I returned to
+the Maison du bon Tabac and to my bed. Ten minutes after I had entered
+the house, came Chocolat, the messenger from the old Café of the
+Assassins, knocking as the devil knocked on old Luther’s door at
+Weimar. Then I knew that all was not well with Mimi, and down I went,
+the black man upon my heels, vainly endeavouring in three languages to
+tell me what had happened.
+
+What a jargon it was, what a medley of all the elusive argot of the
+cabarets! This much alone was clear--that Mimi La Godiche had got
+somehow into the Café of the Assassins (they call it the Lapin Agil
+to-day), and that if I did not get her out she certainly would be
+murdered.
+
+True, there was a _cipi_, or municipal guard, to protect her from the
+immediate fury of her friends; but these would force her presently to
+the pavement, and then God help her! So much Chocolat, the messenger,
+declared as we hurried down the alley, passed Cerberus at the gate
+thereof, and plunged into the darkness of the labyrinth below. I could
+save Mimi La Godiche--the _patron_ wished it; madame, his wife, was of
+like opinion. The danger lay in the alleys--not in any house, and
+certainly not at the famous cabaret of the Agile Wolf. Upon this point
+Chocolat was emphatic. They could look after their own--the streets
+were another affair.
+
+Well, I reached the place at last, after as unpleasant a descent as
+ever led to Avernus, and entered the café just upon the stroke of
+midnight.
+
+You know the place; the dirty courtyard before it; the rude benches in
+the shed that serves for a concert-room; the horrid unshaven faces of
+men who wear the mask of death; the savage ferocity in the women’s
+eyes. Of course, there are lights enough; lights and a rousing piano,
+and a chansonnier who lisps things we should be very sorry to repeat
+to-morrow. The fellow was singing nothing more virile than “Monsieur
+le Curé” when I came in, and, to be candid, not a soul there paid me
+a sou’s worth of attention. Remember that I was unknown in these
+places except as a poor devil of a sculptor trying to singe his wings
+in the candle of ambition. This reputation has been my protection
+hitherto, alike at the Maison du bon Tabac and in the alleys of the
+Butte.
+
+Here at the Lapin Agil I must lose it, finally and irreparably, as all
+the omens seem to say--and losing it, have no longer a home upon the
+Butte of Montmartre.
+
+De Courcy was singing when I entered the cabaret, and a bald-headed
+old man with a chalk-faced child, who should have been his daughter,
+appeared the only claque which the performer commanded. Little Mimi La
+Godiche I spied out at once, sitting at a table with a huge ruffian
+they call the Mount upon the one side and Desmond Barrymore upon the
+other. I was glad to see Desmond there, and pushed my way over to him.
+Across the room there stood a company of as savage an appearance as
+any defender of the Café des Assassins might desire--squat, burly,
+black-eyed brigands, fearful women, girls who saw the sun rise every
+day but rarely had seen it set. These were watching Mimi and the Mount
+as though the whole drama moved about them. Desmond Barrymore,
+however, did not appear to know what it was all about, and told me so
+immediately.
+
+“The man says he’s robbed,” he explained--pointing to the Mount with
+the stump of a tattered cigarette. “I guess he’s dreaming. Come right
+in, Henry, and help me to put the fear of God into him.”
+
+He made way for me upon the bench, and I sat down and began to ask
+Mimi about it. Her cheeks have not much colour in a common way, but
+they were now a beautiful crimson and there was light enough in her
+eyes to set the café on fire.
+
+“What’s up, Mimi?” I asked her. “Why did you send Chocolat barking to
+my door?”
+
+She kicked a pair of fat legs against the bench, and, leaning back,
+she laughed in the ruffian’s face as he bent down to catch her answer.
+
+“_Ah, mes enfants_,” she cried, imitating the inimitable Georges
+Tiercy in his famous song. “_Ah, mes enfants--ce cochon de
+Jean-le-Mont a une écrevisse dans le vol-au-vent_”--and by that she
+meant (for the line is already grown grey) that the fellow who
+pestered her had a bee in his bonnet.
+
+“How did you come here?” I asked her.
+
+“In the automobile of Monsieur le Comte de Pigalle.”
+
+They laughed at this, for I need not tell you, Paddy, that the Rue
+Pigalle does not boast its Count, and that an automobile which could
+climb the Butte might set out to-morrow to vanquish Mont Blanc.
+
+“No, nonsense. Mimi… there has been a row. What is it all about?”
+
+Barrymore intervened, jerking a fine fat thumb towards the ruffian.
+
+“The fellow says she robbed him.”
+
+“Of what, Barrymore?”
+
+“Of a cigarette-case set in diamonds.”
+
+Again the café roared with laughter. A cigarette-case set with
+diamonds at the Lapin Agil! Oh, famous treasure! I, of course, knew
+the truth in an instant. Mimi La Godiche had stolen my property from
+the man who stole it from me.
+
+“What do you say to that, Mimi?”
+
+She looked at me as a child in wonder--never was there a cleverer
+little actress or one with a cooler head.
+
+“Do not be foolish, Monsieur Henry (_ne faites pas des bêtises_), I
+only smoke a pipe.”
+
+“And you, my friend?”--this to the ruffian they call the Mount.
+
+But he flinched at the question, and drained a glass of filthy liquor
+before he answered it.
+
+“She stole the box. Do I steal with my own hands? No, monsieur, but
+the she-cats of Paris could rob the Bourse. I was walking to my seat
+when she pushed against me. Ask the ‘cipi’ if it is not true? I will
+have her searched, I tell you… she shall give me back my property!”
+
+“Your property, good man! Do you carry cigarette boxes set in
+diamonds?”
+
+“Monsieur, I am an honest man--this property was lost in Paris, and I
+would restore it to its rightful owner.”
+
+“Then you will restore it to me immediately, for it is mine and was
+lost at the Quat-Z-Arts Ball, as you very well know.”
+
+Well, Paddy, this took him by the heels, so to speak, and laid him
+upon his back. I had been careful not to advertise the case, fearing a
+reputation for riches among the apaches of the Butte; but the cat was
+out of the bag this time and every ear intent. As for the ruffian, he
+was floored for the moment; but he recovered a second wind of argument
+presently, and, being both drunk and querulous, was by no means done
+with.
+
+“It is an affair for the police,” he exclaimed, lurching as he sat,
+and bringing his fist down with a smashing blow upon the table. “Ask
+the ‘cipi’--she must go with me to the police-station and take the
+affair there. I am an honest man and I will not be robbed. You say
+that this is your case, monsieur--well, prove so much to the police
+and I shall have no more to say. But you shall prove it--I will make
+you, I, Jean-le-Mont--hear that, monsieur--I will make you prove it!”
+
+He stretched an arm across the table and pulled the lappet of my coat
+with clumsy vigour. I saw that an uproar was at hand, but determined
+to keep my temper as long as possible. Big as Desmond Barrymore and I
+are, we were no match for the black company upon the opposite side of
+the room--and there was a magazine which any foolish word might fire
+in an instant. So it was necessary to temporise and, above all things,
+to keep the mob quiet; in which endeavour I called for a bottle of
+wine and some cigars, and affected to make light of the fellow’s
+impudence.
+
+“You are talking nonsense,” I said. “My case had my name inside it--we
+can easily prove that. Drink a glass of wine with me and then come to
+the station. What’s the hurry about? We sha’n’t run away, and I don’t
+suppose you have any engagement. Now, isn’t that a fair offer,
+monsieur?”
+
+He muttered something, I know not what, and sank back to glower at the
+waiter Juno, who snapped the cork from a bottle and set it before me.
+Mimi, I observed, was still smiling; Desmond Barrymore playing with
+his cigarette as a man over-anxious, but not afraid. As for the
+_canaille_ opposite, I perceived its hesitation, and did not fail to
+take its meaning. There could be no brawl permitted in the cabaret,
+but there might very well be a pretty affair outside. In a word, they
+waited for us to go, each believing that he or she would shortly
+become the possessor of a gold cigarette-case set with diamonds. This
+was the state of the game when the man they call Jean-le-Mont spoiled
+everything by a premature declaration of hostilities, both unexpected
+and maladroit. For what should he do but lurch to his feet, catch Mimi
+by both her slim arms, and begin to hug her like a bear; while he did
+not cease to shower upon her that unnameable abuse in common use upon
+the Butte.
+
+Now, this was very unexpected, Paddy, and left the “backs” rather
+nonplussed. A table stood between the pair--bottle and glasses had
+already gone crash to the floor. Had I struck at the man immediately,
+I might have hit Mimi, and done her a mischief; it was impossible to
+get at the fellow’s legs or to secure so firm a grip upon his arms as
+would open them and release his prey. Luckily, Desmond is a man of
+some wit, and did not fail me. I saw him watching the pair with a
+droll expression upon his face; then he calmly put his cigarette under
+the giant’s nose, and held it there until the fellow turned upon him
+savagely and struck a Triton’s blow. Before he could repeat it I had
+laid him on the floor with a counter that Molt of Cambridge taught me;
+and you could count the minutes before he rose again.
+
+Forgive me, Paddy, for thrusting upon you this plain tale of a tavern
+brawl. The papers have a “piece” about it, and that is my excuse. It
+will also permit you to understand the new _rôle_ in which I find
+myself--that of brother, uncle, guardian, foster-father, tutor, friend
+to a tousled-haired nymph of the slums, for whom now I am solely
+responsible.
+
+Admittedly, there has been some personal humiliation before this was
+arrived at. Your ready mind will depict the scene in the cabaret after
+that Jean-le-Mont lay upon the floor, and the “_cipi_” drew his sword
+and bawled murder. Upon my life, I thought the three of us were done
+for. The cries, the fierce oaths, the looks, the words of them! And
+then upon it all, the enraged _patron_ forcing us all to the street,
+swearing that he would have no murder in his house; which, my dear
+Paddy, remembering that it used to be the Café of the Assassins, you
+must admit to be both illogical and disloyal.
+
+He said that we should go, and go it seemed we must. The place was in
+an uproar now; the steep street very soon became a pandemonium. I knew
+that the apaches were out, and I would tell you what I would tell no
+other man alive, that I had the fear of God in me down to my very
+toes.
+
+And what of this waif and stray, Mimi La Godiche, who had my
+cigarette-case upon her, and must, but for our protection, jostle with
+the ravening wolves at the door? I had never understood the child, and
+I understood her less in that moment--for there she was smiling still,
+or, stooping, as her trick was, to smooth her short dress over her
+knees; now bursting into laughter; now saying, “_Ah, mes enfants_,” in
+that tone inimitable of the cabaret. And the ruffian at her feet had
+drawn a knife long enough to cut up the beef at Smithfield. Oh, my
+dear Paddy, what a harvest of the green years as Jehan Rictus would
+paint them for us in those immortal verses which my countrymen so
+rarely understand!
+
+This babel of sounds endured five full and dreadful minutes, I
+suppose, during which time the ladies of the company lost no time in
+emptying the glasses of the gentlemen, and the gentlemen in picking
+the pockets of the ladies. When it became clear that we must go or
+face an enraged _patron_ and three of the prettiest bullies in
+Montmartre, I whispered a word to Desmond to stand all close until we
+reached the street, and then to go as calmly and with as little
+concern as might be toward my box of a house upon the height.
+
+Granted that this was the uninventive hope of a man who certainly
+believed he would find a knife in him shortly; but, Paddy, what better
+plan could you have named, or by what road did wisdom lie?
+
+We had to go out into that darkness of the gutter, where the wolves
+were waiting, and to go upon the instant. No excuse, no entreaty
+seemed to modify the temper of the ruffian, who feared the police, and
+would have none of us. For my part, I preferred the unknown dangers of
+the pavement to the clubs of Chocolat and the _patron_; and, although
+a scene in Thiers recurred to me, when the prisoners from the Abbey
+were driven forth to slaughter in those fateful September massacres, I
+chose to whistle one of Legay’s songs rather than to recite it. Then,
+putting my arm about Mistress Mimi’s waist, I dragged her from the
+place, and went pell-mell to the fray. Eheu, Paddy, what a moment to
+live! what a pretty episode in the life of a young gentleman come to
+Paris to study the sculptor’s art!
+
+We were in the thick of it, then, and no mistake at all about the
+matter. Fifty at least of the choicest blackguards of the Butte waited
+in the alley and swarmed about us instantly. I felt their hands all
+over me like mice upon a sack of corn. One rogue thrust his great
+fingers into my waistcoat pocket, and had the satisfaction of taking
+therefrom an American time-piece of the value of three shillings and
+sixpence; another robbed me of a wooden pencil in a tin case; a third
+of a couple of five-franc pieces and some small change. This plunder
+was far from being what they wanted. Just as the vultures loom
+mysteriously upon the horizon when a man sits down to die by the
+wayside, so did they appear at this talk of gold and diamonds.
+
+Had there been but two or three there gathered together, I don’t doubt
+they would have dealt with us as men deal with chickens at Easter; but
+their very numbers defeated a set purpose, and the lights of the
+cabaret forbade a murder. For a little while we swayed about as a ship
+caught in a vortex; the lamps shone down upon faces besotten with
+drink or fired by greed; I could see the room behind us, the figure of
+the _patron_, who still gesticulated, the gaunt form of Jean-le-Mont,
+now risen to his feet; and it seemed to me to take the place of a
+pleasant harbour one had quitted in despair. Then I think a ruffian
+tried to pull me down from behind; but the press was too close, and I
+caught his hand in mine and went near to breaking his wrist. This was
+a mistake, for he also possessed a knife, and drew it, and it needed
+an iron hand upon his throat to silence him.
+
+I am going deeper than I meant into these police-court news, Paddy,
+chiefly that you may understand my present difficulty with Mimi La
+Godiche. Let me tell you that when the fun really began, when fists
+were busy and hats were flying down the Butte, when the women shrieked
+and fled and the men called upon their fellows to make an end of us, I
+discovered that she had friends, even among such as these, that she
+could call them by their gutter-names and that they would answer her.
+It may be that many of them hung back just because it was Mimi of the
+booths and the _fêtes foraines_, and by no chance could she be
+credited with the possession of sixpence; but, the reflection apart,
+my spirits sank when I heard them recognise her, and a sense of
+degradation, impossible to define, afflicted me anew.
+
+What a position for Henry Gastonard to be in--self-sought, inevitable,
+the price of this gipsy’s game upon the Butte; the consequence of a
+chosen masquerade and a self-imposed war upon civilisation!
+
+Were there not a thousand devils of my Saxon self-respect crying at my
+elbow to have done with it--to pitch them a handful of money--to say
+to them, “There is your sister in the arts; take her by the hand and
+lead her to her home?” A flash of thought it may have been, while I
+dealt with the gentlemen of the pavement and calculated the chances
+with a greater precision; but there it was, and while it ran strong in
+my head, the girl herself lay almost in my very arms, smiling still, a
+very _gamin_ enjoying a brawl as a common incident in her daily life.
+Do you wonder, Paddy, that I clung to my wreckage and refused to part
+with it to any other robber upon the shore? By heaven and earth, I
+swear she is the best plucked ’un that ever wore a red silk stocking
+or showed it on a booth to a gaping multitude. And that you shall come
+to believe for yourself presently--when I take you fifty paces further
+from the cabaret and show you in a line just why we were not murdered.
+
+Do you remember the Rue St. Vincent, that narrow lane by the
+Assassins, with the great black buttresses and the dingy oil-lamp we
+used to deride together? Well, it was just by there that we seemed in
+for the worst; just by the very corner that you would not have paid
+the half of a brass farthing for our chances.
+
+I had as good as given it up, and fallen to wondering what it feels
+like to have six inches of steel in your vitals while twenty hands are
+picking your pockets and twenty more are rifling your shoes. That this
+was premature, the unexpected but quite gentlemanly appearance of some
+fifteen agile _sergents de ville_ immediately assured me. They had
+been fetched, it seemed, by the “cipi,” or municipal guard, at the
+cabaret, who, while he would not have lifted a finger to save Mimi La
+Godiche, was by no means willing that an Englishman should be papered
+to-morrow, or found drowned upon the following morning. Thus the
+company, armed to its very teeth, and thus the rats scuttling to their
+holes, the women left to slither down the steep, the men crying that
+Mimi La Godiche was _une guêpe_, and that they would settle with her
+upon another occasion.
+
+I thanked the guard, Paddy; thanked Desmond Barrymore for his kindness
+to the girl; and bidding him “good night” (it should have been good
+morning), I climbed the mountain to that verdant alley wherein my home
+lies, and took Mimi to the parlour with me. Her first act was to
+return me my diamonds. I need not particularise as to where she had
+hidden them, or what was her inspiration. She is here as I write this,
+like a dog upon my carpet. She has been for twenty hours almost in the
+same position--but what am I going to do with her, what provision make
+for her, or how am I going to smuggle her in safety from this mount of
+thieves, I know, my dear Paddy, no more than your estimable self.
+
+So let me have your consolations. All places are filled with fools,
+says Cicero--but there are but two at the Maison du bon Tabac, and one
+is Mimi La Godiche and the other--
+
+                                                     Yours eternally,
+                                                     Henry Gastonard.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER II.
+
+ [The response of Paddy O’Connell, of Glendalough, County Wicklow, to
+ his friend, Henry Gastonard of the Maison du bon Tabac at Paris.]
+
+                                         Glendalough, County Wicklow,
+                                                      May 18th, 1905.
+
+Dear Henry,--Your letter is received. I gather therefrom two
+facts:--1. That you are making a fool of yourself in Paris. 2. That
+this occupation is congenial to you and the lady of the circus, upon
+whom you appear to have bestowed your patronage.--Believe me to be, My
+dear Henry,
+
+                                                     Yours sincerely,
+                                                     Paddy O’Connell.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER III.
+
+ [A letter from the same brief author addressed to the Reverend Arthur
+ Warrington of Beldon, Suffolk.]
+
+                                         Glendalough, County Wicklow,
+                                                      May 18th, 1905.
+
+Reverend Sir,--Your request that I would favour you with such news as
+I may from time to time receive from my friend Henry Gastonard permits
+me to assure you that he is now established in Paris, and appears, by
+his diligent habit and assured gifts, to be doing all that will
+presently entitle him to the permanent possession of the fortune,
+conditionally bequeathed to him by his late father, Henry Gastonard,
+of London and Bordeaux.
+
+My dear Sir,
+
+                                               Yours very faithfully,
+                                        The O’Connell of Glendalough.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER IV.
+
+ [Henry Gastonard continues the story in a letter to his friend Paddy
+ O’Connell.]
+
+                                           The Hôtel St. Paul, Paris,
+                                                      May 24th, 1905.
+
+Dear Paddy,--Permit me to ignore the flattering document I had the
+honour to receive from you three days ago.
+
+Friendship, my dear Paddy, calls for something more than a pious
+expression of opinion upon the reason or conduct of a friend. It
+demands a sympathetic endeavour to understand, and an unshaken
+determination to accept such facts as are confided to us and call for
+our judgment. To tell a man he is a fool is often to tell him the
+truth. But I am not aware of many who have become less foolish for the
+knowledge, or have derived any consolation whatever from so bald an
+utterance.
+
+Now, Paddy, you know as well as I do that you are all agog for further
+news of Mimi La Godiche; and were you in Paris this little chit of the
+booths would have your warm friendship, and you would lay scalps upon
+the green should any defame her. Cannot I see you with your feet upon
+an historic mantel-shelf, and your eyes (so far as tobacco smoke will
+permit) upon a regal ceiling, reading that same letter for a second
+time, and willing to barter all Ireland and the people thereof for one
+week of the Butte, one month of this rolling world of gilt and tinsel
+and all its spangled joys. Admit the truth of it, and write me
+something sensible. For, Paddy, I have need of you--there is the devil
+to pay, and the game grows interesting.
+
+You will remember that I left Mimi La Godiche upon my hearthrug.
+Barrymore had left us; the time was the early morning of the day; the
+_canaille_ of the Assassins had gone God knows where. Save for the old
+soldier, who is at once my valet-de-chambre, butler, cook, housemaid,
+and scullery wench, there was no one with me in the Maison du bon
+Tabac.
+
+Depict the scene, Paddy, and bear with a recital of my virtues. A room
+as large as an opera box; about its walls the drawings of Caran
+d’Ache, Henri Riviere, and Willette; a couple of armchairs, as ragged
+as the beggars at the door of St. Eustache; a yacht’s piano bang
+against the wall; a buffet with all the drinks that are not good for
+us; the very worst novels littering all the tables; cigarettes and
+cigars everywhere; pipes in all the niches--such is the mountain home
+of Henry Gastonard, gentleman.
+
+And upon the hearthrug of this charming apartment, style Louis de
+Montmartre, the tousled-haired Mimi squatting like any lady of the
+harem, her legs crossed, her feathered hat in her hand, her cheeks as
+rosy as a picture from a Christmas-book.
+
+Now, Paddy, I have told you something of Mimi the Simpleton; but, to
+be as frank as the priest of Clanconnell, ’tis precious little that I
+myself know of her, anyway. I can no more tell you whether she be
+virtuous or otherwise than recite ten chapters of the Koran. This is a
+difficulty, to be sure, which my friends of the Hill will never
+understand. I can hear the roar of laughter which would attend its
+expression either in the neighbourhood of Neuilly or in that of la
+Galette. Mimi La Godiche virtuous! Then was Catherine of Russia a
+latter-day saint, and Lucretia herself as misunderstood as all the
+historians would now have us to believe. This would be the opinion of
+the Butte and of Neuilly. It is not my opinion--I cannot tell you why;
+nor do I trouble myself for reasons.
+
+She sat upon my hearthrug, I say, her legs crossed and her great
+feathered hat in her hand. When I questioned her, her answers were
+often monosyllables; sometimes nods and smiles; long sentences but
+rarely. Of her past she appeared to know nothing at all. Her
+birthplace she named as Vendome, but was not sure of it. She could
+tell me nothing of her childhood; the Fair she spoke of with dread;
+the lion-tamer Cassadore stood to her for all terrors past, present,
+and to come. She would have burned her hand in the fire rather than
+return to him.
+
+“Have you no remembrance of your father?” I asked her.
+
+She shook her head many times, as one who wished to think but could
+not.
+
+“And your mother?”
+
+“There was someone at Orleans, Monsieur Henry, and after that
+Cassadore. Oh, Cassadore always, I assure you.”
+
+“You must be able to tell me more than that, Mimi. Somewhere,
+somewhere in your life, there was a woman who was kind to you. Now,
+don’t you remember when?”
+
+“I remember a very old lady, Monsieur Henry--that would have been at
+Orleans. And then the road--the great, white, open road--so many days,
+so many nights… and after that Cassadore always until you came,
+Monsieur Henry.”
+
+“Why did you not run away, Mimi?”
+
+“To whom should I run?”
+
+“Anywhere away from Cassadore. You are young… you can work; why did
+you not leave him?”
+
+“It was impossible, monsieur--as well ask the Abbé to run away from
+his church.”
+
+“You mean that the life had become necessary to you?”
+
+“Yes, yes, I mean that--would you put me in the kitchen, Monsieur
+Henry?”
+
+“Certainly not, Mimi--but, you see, you can’t stop any longer in
+Montmartre, and what then?”
+
+Her face clouded, but only for an instant.
+
+“I shall go away with you, Monsieur Henry.”
+
+“Why should you go with me?”
+
+“Because I do not wish to go with Cassadore.”
+
+“There are plenty of others who would take you away, Mimi. Why do you
+think of me?”
+
+“I cannot tell you, Monsieur Henry--you must know yourself why it is.”
+
+“And if I do, what then? Suppose I cannot take you away?”
+
+“I shall ask Mr. Barrymore.”
+
+“Oh, Barrymore would not be of any use to you.”
+
+“Then I shall go back to Cassadore.”
+
+“It wouldn’t be safe for you to stop in Montmartre now--I suppose you
+understand that much, Mimi?”
+
+She laughed a little at the suggestion.
+
+“Jean-le-Mont is very angry,” she said, “I am afraid of Jean-le-Mont.”
+
+“When did you steal my cigarette-case, Mimi; how did you know that
+Jean-le-Mont had it?”
+
+“He came to Mr. Barrymore’s atelier three days ago--the Italian who
+makes the models told me that Jean had the box. At the Lapin Agil I
+gave him a rose, Monsieur Henry, and then put my arms about his neck.
+Ah, the droll--he discovered it at once, but he did not wish to tell
+because the others would know and rob him afterwards. Then Mr.
+Barrymore came in because he saw me there, and I told him, and we sent
+for you----”
+
+“And this was the first time you have stolen anything, Mimi?”
+
+“Monsieur Henry, you know that it is.”
+
+ * * * * *
+
+Observe, Paddy, the reiteration of this. I know that she is virtuous;
+I know that she is honest. No reasons given or asked, as they say in
+the thieves’ advertisements. Upon my word of honour, the good faith of
+it is astonishing! For I do know, Paddy… and I would stake my fortune
+(or what is left of it) upon the truth of my astonishing creed.
+
+I shall not fatigue you with further particulars of this amazing
+morning. For a couple of hours, perhaps, I slept upon my bed, and Mimi
+upon the hearthrug; but at six o’clock I waked her, and stopping only
+for coffee and a roll, I was out of the house by seven and upon my way
+to the Paris of law and of civilisation. All my instinct told me that
+the thieves of the Butte would make short work of Mimi La Godiche if
+she remained in their neighbourhood. Let her go to the old haunt this
+night, and a knife in the back or a collarette of rope would certainly
+be her reward. You know Montmartre; you know the particular kind of
+blackguard and of blackguardess it can vomit from its cavernous and
+detestable mouth. From these I fled with Mimi at my side--whither, the
+great Saint Christopher, patron of travellers, alone might tell me.
+
+You are aware that I have an apartment at the Hôtel St. Paul, and
+thither first I took the child in the hope that inspiration would come
+and a swift solution of a pretty problem be found. Be sure the
+excellent _patron_ stared not a little, and that Madame, his wife,
+sniffed more of the morning air than had filled her ancient lungs for
+many a day. But a better entertainment was that provided by Narisse of
+the Faubourg St. Honoré, who came round with his hand-maidens to
+dress her, and must take my directions three times before assuring
+himself finally of the madness of this English traveller.
+
+Oh, Paddy, cannot you hear this man as he exclaims to heaven upon the
+feathers of Montmartre, and sees a national infamy in the fine, if
+tattered stuffs of Belleville? No doubt I should have gone not “Chez
+Narisse” but the Magazin du Louvre; there bought not silk and chiffon
+but good, honest serges, a hat to fit a governess and lace suitable to
+the deaconess of a Sunday-school. But, Paddy, I am a man, and I know
+the name but of one costumier in all Paris, and he is Narisse, and he
+made of Mimi La Godiche a veritable beauty in less time than you or I
+could finish a rubber of bridge at the club. Ah, these mad
+Englishmen--they still exist it appears, and blessed is Paris because
+of them! And what shall be said for the girl herself, and what must
+she do upon the instant but sing the man a song after the fashion of
+Jehan Rictus, just because of the clothes he had put upon her back.
+Believe me, when I tell you that the models themselves came near to
+joining in the chorus, and that Narisse was speechless before the end
+of the second verse.
+
+Mimi, then, is dressed and in her right mind. Will you follow me as I
+lead her forth about the hour of twelve o’clock, and ask myself, what
+next? There are many in Paris who know me, and not a few who stared
+with some astonishment. Whatever the costumier’s art, my dear Paddy,
+it cannot disguise the walk, the airs, the manner of the Butte. I am a
+person of some sensibility out of doors, and I object to that freedom
+which grips you hysterically by the arm, at odd intervals, to drag you
+to a shop window and exclaim upon a rope of pearls which would ruin a
+Maharajah, or an emerald bracelet none but a Rothschild could buy. It
+is not a joy to me when my companion has the wit and the language
+which silences enterprising cabmen or calls for the retort
+discourteous of the foot-passenger who has been obstructed. Publicity
+has no charms for me; I prefer to give the wall to the humourists and
+to go in obscurity.
+
+We lunched at the Café of the Cascade in the Bois. There was a goodly
+company present, and “her ladyship” fell in love with the Baroness
+Séchard, who was with Pechala, of the Spanish Embassy. I think the
+grand manners of many of these far from grand dames somewhat
+astonished her; but the size of the asparagus tickled her sense of
+humour, and the bill was ever in her mind.
+
+“What will happen to us if you cannot pay the bill, Monsieur Henry?”
+
+“We shall go to prison, Mimi.”
+
+“Cassadore went to prison once--at Châlons-sur-Marne--I do not wish
+to go to prison, Monsieur Henry.”
+
+“Then we must try to find some money, Mimi. How much have you now?”
+
+The question should not have been put, for Mimi carries her money
+where she carried my cigarette-case, and made no secret of the matter.
+
+I was but just in time to prevent a display which might have brought
+us the bill on the spot, and, as it was, Etienne, the waiter, grinned
+from ear to ear as he floated to us with a sole à la Victorine.
+
+“Did they not tell you in the Rue Pigalle that I am rich, Mimi?”
+
+“You could never be rich, Monsieur Henry; you are not clever enough.”
+
+“But, Mimi, am I not a sculptor?”
+
+This appeared to her a droll saying. She laughed quite honestly and
+again appealed to my candour.
+
+“You know that you will never be a sculptor; you have no talent,
+Monsieur Henry; even I have more talent than you. Besides, if you
+were”--she added wisely--“how poor we should be.”
+
+“It is not good to be poor in Paris, Mimi.”
+
+“It is not good to be poor anywhere, Monsieur Henry.”
+
+“But if one has no way to get a living--as I have not, what then,
+Mimi?”
+
+“Oh, then one sleeps at the Hôtel of the Belle Etoile. I have stayed
+there often when I used to go to the Fêtes. It is a very large hotel,
+and you can see the stars while you lie in bed.”
+
+“Would you go back there, Mimi?”
+
+“Jesu--no; why do you speak of it when one is no longer hungry,
+Monsieur Henry?”
+
+I did not pursue the subject further, but paid the bill and went out
+with her to the Bois. A shabby cab made the usual grand tour with us
+and helped us to pass a pleasant hour. Perhaps it astonished me to
+discover that the Bois impressed her but little--but then she had been
+accustomed to the spangles all her life and could make little of a
+passable equipage with a fat Baroness in it, or a costly motor driven
+by a man who looked like an Oneida Indian. Her exclamations were few
+but her observation unfailing. She detected me at once when I nodded
+to Lea d’Alençon, who drove a pair of cream-colored ponies near the
+Cascade.
+
+“Why did that lady look so angry, Monsieur Henry? Are you in love with
+her?”
+
+“Why should I be, Mimi? She is the wife of Captain d’Alençon of the
+Engineers.”
+
+“But she is in love with you--I am sure of it. And she is very angry
+with you.”
+
+“Then I cannot help it. Let us get out and walk, Mimi, and ask
+ourselves where we are going to stay to-night. That will be more
+interesting than Madame d’Alençon.”
+
+“You wish to see her pass again--is not that the reason, Monsieur
+Henry?”
+
+Well, of course it was, and she had guessed wisely enough; but what
+was I to say to her? Lea is one of my virtues, as I have told you
+before, Paddy. When I wish to balance the books of all the moralities,
+cash, day and ledger, Lea d’Alençon stands for the most valuable of
+my assets. She is too clever to be anything else, and yet you might
+call her the most amorous woman and one of the most dangerous in
+Paris. Just a hundred times, perhaps, has she advised me to get out of
+this delectable country and go back to England. I might have done so
+but for her promise to visit me there upon an early occasion. Be sure,
+Paddy, that I have no desire whatever to cut the Captain’s throat
+merely to prove myself a good Parisian. Lea is charming as a friend.
+She would be all the malignities impersonified otherwise.
+
+I should tell you that I had recognised her when she passed me, and
+that this astonished her considerably. It is considered less than
+nothing at all in Paris to drive in the Bois with a cocotte--but to
+recognise your lady friends when thus employed must be named little
+less than an infamy. So here was a pretty problem for this majestic
+Astarte with the raven locks and the liquid black eyes and all the
+langour of the trained voluptuary. Either I wished to insult her or it
+were possible that my companion might be introduced. This she must
+have told herself, for the chariot reappeared presently and was drawn
+up at the pavement not fifty yards from the place where we stood.
+
+“Bon jour, Madame d’Alençon.”
+
+“Bon jour, Monsieur Gastonard.”
+
+“I have a story for you; when will a good comrade hear it?”
+
+“Why not at five o’clock; my husband is at Valérien. Is it a story of
+the theatre, Monsieur Gastonard?”
+
+“It is a story of virtue, madame.”
+
+We laughed together. This poor old Pantaloon Virtue still provokes a
+smile--if his name be ever mentioned--in such saloons as Lea
+d’Alençon and her kind have made famous. Some spirit of sheer devilry
+must have prompted me to this confidence, Paddy; but behind it lay a
+firm belief in the sagacity of this shrewd woman of the world and in
+her honesty. She would place Mimi the Simpleton in some possible
+situation--I had not a moment’s doubt of it.
+
+How we laughed together over the whole story when I went to her rooms
+an hour later. Mimi, meanwhile, had been dispatched to the Hôtel St.
+Paul, and there entrusted to the safe custody of _la patronne_. I
+myself sat in a wonderful cradle chair and watched Lea pour out really
+excellent tea from a Chinese pot that should have been behind glass.
+She had changed her gown for a delicate robe of lace and chiffon, and
+thrust the prettiest pair of feet in all Paris from a petticoat over
+which a costumier must have shed tears of joy.
+
+“Who is this girl?” she asked me.
+
+I told her that I did not know.
+
+“Why has she become virtuous?”
+
+“A natural condition, Lea; why is not marble chalk?”
+
+Observe, Paddy, that Lea and I have been some months at the point when
+“Monsieur” or “Madame” provokes ridicule, and no formality clouds our
+brutal frankness. Had it been otherwise I could not have spoken to her
+of Mimi La Godiche at all.
+
+“Let me tell you the girl’s story,” I said, “or what I know of it. Six
+months ago she was performing outside the walls of Paris with a
+monster of a man named Cassadore, whose riches are three lions and
+whose wardrobe a pair of spangled tights. I was in the tent when this
+child was taken into the cages with this man, and I did not fail to
+remark two facts; one, that she was absolutely lacking in a sense of
+fear, and, secondly, that she might become eventually one of the most
+beautiful women in Paris. Five francs judiciously expended obtained an
+introduction to her--a hundred francs bought her of the lion-tamer.
+Rejoice, my dear Lea, that in our society women are not sold for a
+hundred nor for ten hundred francs, or who can tell what I might not
+bid for you at an auction. In Mimi’s case the bargain was soon made.
+After all, the tamer had a dozen girls of her station ready to be
+driven into the cages at his nod--what was this girl to him? I bought
+her and took her to the Butte. Febry, of La Galette, gave her a chance
+to get hissed upon his stage, and she did not disappoint him. I tried
+her again, paying a thousand francs for the privilege at the
+Quat-Z-Arts and the Coq d’Or. Again, my dear lady, she was a hopeless
+failure. No femme de chambre acting in the kitchen could have failed
+so dismally. And yet I continue to believe in her; my faith is
+unshaken. I am ready to declare that she will become a great actress,
+astonish Paris, and end in an apartment not a third of a mile removed
+from the Arc de Triomphe or the Avenue Marigny. It is this faith which
+brings me now to the house of the charming Lea d’Alençon. I come,
+_foi d’honneur_, simply to seek a salve to my vanity. How shall I get
+this child taught? Where shall I place her while she is being taught?
+You, of all my friends, can best advise me upon that point. Do so, and
+you shall not find a more grateful man in Paris to-day.”
+
+Well, I could see that I had impressed her, but I had not convinced
+her, as the next question proved.
+
+“Why do you say that the child is virtuous?” she asked me.
+
+“Because I know her to be so,” was my retort. “Put your hand upon the
+marbles at the Madeleine and will they burn you? It is true that a
+fire might be conceived of such a nature as to melt your marble and
+cause it to run as liquid steel--but, my dear Lea, we are not talking
+of the forges, but of the facts. This child is virtuous because she is
+utterly devoid of any desire to be anything else. The wisest up on the
+Butte recognise the truth and are proud of it.”
+
+“And now these very people drive her out. Did you not tell me that she
+cannot return to Montmartre, Henry?”
+
+“Certainly not--at least, to the only quarter of Montmartre where it
+would be possible for her to live. The thieves have marked her
+down--she would not be alive a week if she remained up there.”
+
+“And you propose----?”
+
+“My dear Lea, nothing of the kind. I have no matrimonial intentions,
+believe me. It is you who will propose.”
+
+She laughed a little wickedly. The talk had drifted apart from my
+idea, and I could not but be amused by her sudden _volte face_.
+
+“Louis does not return from Valérien until to-morrow,” she said
+quickly. “I am supposed to dine with my sister Lucille. Where are you
+going to take me, Henry?”
+
+“Alone, Lea?”
+
+She looked me straight in the face.
+
+“Let us ask the Curé of the Madeleine.”
+
+“By all means. And while we dine we will make plans for Mimi.”
+
+“Let us dine on the island,” she cried, ignoring it; “there is the
+safest place in Paris.”
+
+“I will be at the Cascade at a quarter to seven. Of course, it may be
+a tragedy.”
+
+“The tragedies, my dear Henry, are always for to-morrow.”
+
+And so, Paddy, amiable fool that I was, I consented. It will be no
+surprise to you to hear that the Curé of the Madeleine had another
+appointment, and could not turn up. But of this dinner and of all the
+absurdities which followed upon it, I will write to-morrow.
+
+Meanwhile, find me, my dear fellow, your friend,
+
+                                                               Harry.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER V.
+
+ [Henry Gastonard writes to Paddy O’Connell telling him the story of a
+ dinner and a challenge.]
+
+                                               Hôtel St. Paul, Paris,
+                                                      May 30th, 1905.
+
+Dear Paddy,--This is to tell you that I go out with Bernard d’Alençon
+somewhere about daybreak to-morrow, and that when I write again, Paris
+will be in possession of a pretty scandal.
+
+I am not joking, my dear Paddy. A more serious human being than Henry
+Gastonard does not exist in all this city to-night. I am to fight
+Bernard d’Alençon, and I am to fight him somewhere in the
+neighbourhood of the Bois at five o’clock to-morrow morning. The
+affair is as irrevocable as the sunset I have just witnessed from the
+Chalets du Cycle, where Mademoiselle Mimi has given me tea and
+recited, to the great astonishment of waiters and cyclists alike, the
+first lesson she received this morning from Pelletier, of the
+Conservatoire.
+
+So, if you please, has this great question of the hour been settled. A
+woman’s shrewd opinion has backed up a mere man’s idea that something
+may be made of Mimi the Simpleton, something at least ventured in her
+interests. The suspicion that this chit of the _fêtes foraines_ may
+yet startle Paris is so much an obsession where I am concerned that I
+have willingly agreed to place her with Pelletier for twelve months
+and to see what comes of it. He is too clever a man to try to make a
+silk purse out of a sow’s ear. He will train her for the Vaudeville or
+the Palais Royal, and if he cannot make a success of her, then is she
+lost indeed. She lodges meanwhile in a little English pension near the
+Louvre, and God help its inmates if she have the mind to misbehave
+herself!
+
+Be sure that for me this is a closed book, and that I am very
+unlikely, when once this other folly is over, to see or hear of
+Mistress Mimi again. The whim of a moment has given her a chance in
+Paris; the whim of another will banish her from my recollection when,
+as must be, if I am not killed to-morrow morning, I set out to save my
+fortune from my cousin and to make those five hundred pounds per annum
+which will enable me to hold it.
+
+You will remember, Paddy, that when last I wrote to you, I was about
+to dine in blessed seclusion with that amiable but charming woman Lea
+d’Alençon. Providence and a far from belle Americaine saved me from
+such an imprudence. The American lady, I understand, appeared just
+when Lea was wrestling with a refractory hat and an equally obstinate
+pyramid of her famous black hair. She carried a letter from Elise
+d’Alençon, the Captain’s sister, who is now in New York, and could
+not, in decency, be denied. What Lea said, or, better still, what she
+thought, I leave you to guess; but she covered her retreat by asking
+her cousin Emilie, who is madly in love with young Derogy of the
+Chasseurs, and by sending post haste for the cavalryman to join us. So
+we were five at the table instead of two, and we dined at Armenonville
+and not at the Cascade.
+
+I was glad of this--frankly glad. Lea is too good a friend of mine
+that I should ever wish her to become anything else. And remember,
+Paddy, that virtue is as much a matter of opportunity and of accident
+as of the commandment, both written and unwritten. To you alone would
+I confess my belief that it had been her intention to bring matters to
+a crisis this night. Bernard was conveniently at Fort Valérien; her
+mother had gone to Tours to let their chateau to a Yankee from
+Vermont; I had come to her in a romantic mood and appealed to her upon
+the score of my interest in another woman--a sure passport to
+intimacy. And then upon the top of it all the lady from New York,
+Jenny Middleton she called herself, with an accent to butter your
+bread and the eye of the eagle as it soars. Oh, we were a merry party,
+be sure; and even cousin Emilie (who is married to a man of sixty as
+sour as vinegar and as yellow) made little of her cavalryman in such
+a presence.
+
+You know the dinner at the Armenonville, as good as it is dear, as
+_chic_ as it is distant. We discussed London restaurants with our
+soup; the Verney scandal with our fish; the character of the American
+man with the entrée and Mimi the Simpleton with the ices. Mrs.
+Middleton, I observed, was much interested in the character of my
+_protégée_ and firm in her belief that I had made a fool of myself.
+
+“She will go back to the lion-tamer in a month,” she said, “and leave
+you with the bill for a keepsake.”
+
+When Lea began her dissertation upon virtue, the lady from the West
+joined in the merriment, and I perceived that here was an American
+who, like others of her countrywomen, had no interest in Paris
+virtuous but much in Paris of the vices. It was cheerful to be done
+with it all at last, and to begin that momentous return which might
+land me either in an infamy or, at the best, destroy my friendship
+with the charming Lea.
+
+I say the fun began at Armenonville, and you will readily understand
+the nature of it. Lea did not disguise her intention to return in my
+cab--Emilie was equally insistent upon riding with the guardsman. For
+a little while we stood in the glitter of the lights, amid the most
+wonderfully dressed women in the world, scheming and planning to our
+different ends. First it would be Lea suggesting three cabs and a
+hurried departure--then the cavalryman gallantly volunteering to
+telephone for an automobile which would carry us all. Mrs. Middleton
+herself providentially had special designs upon me, and watched her
+prey with a feline patience beautiful to behold. When two cabs
+appeared, I put the agitated daughter of Venus in the first of them,
+and by a ruse got Lea and Emilie and the cavalryman into the second.
+
+This was providential to be sure, if we may suppose Providence stoops
+to the mild intrigues of pretty Frenchwomen; for I may tell you that
+d’Alençon himself did not stop the night at Fort Valérien, but was
+back in his own apartment at half-past nine, and detected there by Lea
+just at the moment she was waiting for me to appear and take her to
+supper as I had promised. Ah, the dear soul, what a terrible five
+minutes she must have spent upon the pavement waiting for my cab! But
+a blessed destiny had sent me on with the Stars, to say nothing of the
+Stripes, to the gates of the Jardin de Paris, whence a messenger
+carried a hasty note back to Lea telling her of the impossibility of
+it.
+
+Oh, these fair Americans! Do you know, Paddy, that if I were a man of
+genius, I would make the five hundred a year which my father’s Will
+demands just by catering for their naughtiness in Paris. Of course,
+the whole affair would have to be a sham, as unlike the true Paris as
+Bayswater is unlike London, and no more vicious than a magic-lantern
+show in a Sunday-school. Then I should catch the class which now
+visits that poor place the Jardin de Paris, net the fools who go to
+the Moulin Rouge because they ought not to go, and send them back to
+their native land as happy as a “week-ender” who has seen the Louvre.
+
+Mrs. Middleton, I discovered, had come to Paris to write a book upon
+French social customs. She assured me that it was imperative upon her
+to visit the music-halls. “I want to see the people play,” she said.
+“I guess they work pretty well the same everywhere; but it’s the
+national games I’m set upon.” When I pointed out to her that the lady
+who displayed hose to her fellow-countrymen at the Jardin de Paris was
+a Spaniard, and not a Frenchwoman, she insisted immediately on going
+to verify the fact. It was two in the morning before I got rid of her,
+and then I had to tell her that if she were shut out of her hotel the
+police would want to know the reason why.
+
+So you see, Paddy, I neither dined nor supped with the charming Lea;
+and, once more having escaped those fascinating toils, returned at
+length to a welcome bed. When I awoke on the following morning the
+valet at the hotel informed me that Captain Berton, of the Engineers,
+desired particularly to see me, and upon the fellow being shown up, I
+learned in ten words that he had come to arrange this pleasantry with
+d’Alençon.
+
+Perhaps, had I been clothed and in my right mind I should have
+answered him as he deserved, offered to punch the Captain’s head, and
+told his ambassador not to make a fool of himself. This,
+unfortunately, did not happen. Berton caught me when I was both tired
+and irritable, and I sent him headlong to Honoré de Villefort, that
+old rascal of a Chevalier who will never cease to remind me of his
+obligation. What is even worse, Paddy, I named pistols--and that is
+just the maddest thing your friend Henry Gastonard has done since he
+was born.
+
+I am a fool--I know it. Often as I have desired to play in one of
+those gigantic farces they call an “affair of honour in Paris,” never
+did I contemplate standing up to a man with a pistol in my hand. Of
+course, I had no real cause of quarrel with Bernard d’Alençon, nor he
+with me. He is madly jealous of the charming Lea, and hates me like
+poison; if he can shoot me to-morrrow morning, he will do so.
+
+But, Paddy, I shall, in very truth, have finished my French education
+when this is over, and be prepared to return to England and a sober
+life. It is true that there might be an accident--you may say the same
+every time you call a hansom cab--but, Paddy, if the fun should be
+spoiled and this man hit me, then I call upon you, as the oldest
+friend I have, to do what you can for my little friend of the Butte,
+and to remember that there is no one else in all Christendom who would
+give her sixpence if not--
+
+                                                         Your friend,
+                                                               Harry.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER VI.
+
+ [Being a telegram from Paddy O’Connell to his friend, Henry
+ Gastonard.]
+
+You must be mad. Have wired the Embassy. Am coming over.--Paddy.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER VII.
+
+ [A letter from the Rev. Arthur Warrington of Beldon, Suffolk, to Mrs.
+ Arthur Warrington at Porchester Terrace, Bayswater.]
+
+My Dear Martha,--I will not say thank God; but, are we responsible for
+this unhappy young man’s folly? Should it have pleased the Almighty to
+call him I will see Sands and Collier about the estate at Ingershall
+immediately. Please let me have telegrams as the evening papers come
+in. To think that this should be the end of Henry Gastonard’s fortune,
+his son a debauché in Paris, shot down in a vulgar duel about a
+married woman, and, I doubt not, precious gold lavished upon her. But
+we, dear wife, shall know how to spend that fortune to God’s good
+ends.
+
+I shall, of course, buy a motor-car at once should the worst
+follow.--Your devoted husband,
+
+                                                              Arthur.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER VIII.
+
+ [In which Paddy O’Connell of Glendalough, writes to his sister Clara a
+ full account of the duel between Henry Gastonard and the Captain
+ Bernard d’Alençon.]
+
+                                               Hôtel St. Paul, Paris,
+                                                      June 7th, 1905.
+
+Dear Clara,--You will have learned from the newspapers some of the
+news I have to tell you, but this will not make you less anxious to
+hear it a second time from a family pen.
+
+I arrived in Paris early on the Saturday morning, and drove to the
+Hôtel St. Paul; for, where else would I be driving at all on such a
+day? The newspapers gave me a fine account of poor Henry as we went
+along, and small hope had I of cheering him alive or talking to
+anything better than a corpse. When I arrived at his hotel, they would
+have shut the door in my face but for a way I have with them, and for
+sure the journalists are here all day and would tear the very bandages
+from Harry’s body to photograph the wounds.
+
+Well, I made my way up to the sick man’s room at last, and there found
+the poor fellow stretched upon his bed and looking by no means so
+cheerful as I should have wished to see him. By his side there was a
+little French girl, the one whom he wrote about last week, and a more
+beautiful creature the Lord never created.
+
+This, I confess, was some surprise to me. I am very well acquainted
+with the ladies of Paris, and had made a picture of this particular
+lady for myself. Clara, I was as far from the truth as Dublin from
+Cork. This is a face that the man Greuze should have painted. And oh,
+the airs and graces of her, the little winning ways, and the dignity!
+He tells me that she came from the circus; but if he were not on his
+back I’d call him a liar. Mimi the Simpleton for sure--why, she has
+the sense of twenty in her head, and ’tis your own Paddy who grows red
+in the face every time he argues with her.
+
+Well, the child sprang up upon my entrance, and stood there glaring at
+me like a wild cat out of the shows. What French I remember leads me
+to the belief that her observations were neither flattering to my
+appearance nor my manner--but, God forgive me, I may have
+mistranslated it. As for Harry, he just stirred in his sleep and told
+me to go away, which so tickled me that I laughed like a boy at the
+pantomime.
+
+“Go away!” says I, “Then ’tis yourself that must be putting me out,
+for no other man in Paris can do it.”
+
+“Why,” says he, “if it isn’t old Paddy.”
+
+“My boy,” cried I, “my friend--the only one that ever I shall love in
+all this world--oh, God forgive you, Harry, for this,” says I.
+
+“Paddy,” says he, “I thought you were a journalist. They’ve been here
+all day, Paddy.”
+
+“Show me the man that will come here when I am by, and I will tell you
+where to bury him.”
+
+“The old Paddy, every bit of him. Spoiling for a fight, as ever he
+was.”
+
+“There is no more peaceable man in Paris,” says I; “but lucky that
+your Captain has gone to the wilds! I’d have shot him, Harry, though
+the Parliament itself had been there to prevent me.”
+
+He laughed again at this, but I saw that he was in pain, or, to be
+honest, the little Greuze girl did that same for me, and spoke words
+of which I was content to be hearing poorly. ’Tis plain she worships
+the ground he treads upon, though there is not much of that same just
+now--while as for the boy himself, if there’s any woman in Europe he
+cares a button about, ask Paddy O’Connell to drink cold water, and see
+that he gets it.
+
+“Why do you come here? Why do you make this noise?” she asked me--oh,
+the impudence of it!--with her pretty eyes blazing like coals and her
+cheeks so crimson that a Bishop might have kissed them. “Are you his
+friend to do this? Oh, be ashamed of yourself,” says she, “and go away
+immediately.”
+
+’Twas a just rebuke, Clara, and Paddy not the man to be minding it.
+Presently, when I had done penance before her, she permitted me to sit
+in a chair at the bedside; and, every time I opened my mouth to speak,
+she looked so tremendous that I gulped down my words and ate them for
+very shame. By and by the doctor came in and asked Harry if I had been
+talking, and “never a word” says I, which was the truth to be sure.
+
+I should tell you that Harry was shot on the collar-bone, and devil a
+shirt will he be putting on for a long while to come. ’Tis precious
+hard luck, for he was leaving for England next week to get his living
+as the Will wants him to do. What’s to come of it all now, God only
+knows. If he’s not making five hundred a year by his own exertions
+this time next year, he’ll lose his fortune, and that weedy old hack
+of a curate in Suffolk come in for the whole of it but a paltry
+hundred pounds a year. This must be talked over between us hereafter.
+To-day, when the doctor was gone, and the little witch with the pretty
+face sent out to do some shopping for him, he told me the story of the
+fight, and sorry I am that Paddy O’Connell missed that entertainment.
+For it was a fine affair entirely.
+
+“Why did you go out with the man?” I asked him.
+
+He answered me as shortly:
+
+“Curiosity, Paddy.”
+
+“The cause of half the mischief in the world. Was the woman sorry
+about it?”
+
+“The beautiful Lea? Oh, my dear Paddy, she went to church to pray that
+I might shoot him.”
+
+“There was nothing between you--your solemn word, Harry?”
+
+“Paddy, am I the man----”
+
+“I’d like to meet the one who’d tell me that you were.”
+
+“I have done everything that men do in Paris--why should I have missed
+this, Paddy?”
+
+“Ye were not the man to miss it. Show me the one who says so, and I’m
+ready for him.”
+
+“I wanted to understand why people laugh at what they call an affair
+of honour. They all do laugh in England, and yet there are worse ways
+of putting a bit upon men’s tongues. When I chose pistols I hardly
+knew what I was doing. But I said it and had to stick to it, Paddy.”
+
+“Of course, ye did. Ye weren’t afraid of him, Harry.”
+
+“Not as you would understand it--upon my word, no. But a man who has
+been up all night in a reeking café, and then sees the sun rise over
+Belleville and remembers an appointment for six o’clock in a garden
+near Auteuil, that man would be a liar to say he liked it. There was
+one mortal hour, Paddy, when I would have given half my fortune to
+know what was going to happen. I remember thinking that most
+Englishmen would have pooh-poohed the whole affair and fallen back
+upon the national cant about scruples. Blame old Villefort, who dosed
+me with half the filth they keep at the Taverne Royale--and that old
+beggar, Oleander, who drank enough brandy to poison a regiment on the
+score of it.
+
+“We came down from the Butte singing ‘Brunette aux Yeux Doux’ with all
+our lungs. I sha’n’t tell you a lie and say that I thought Paris
+looked beautiful, or anything of the kind, for it just isn’t, Paddy.
+Everything seemed as cold as a November fog. The sun shone
+sardonically--I remember seeing maids about the doors of the houses,
+and envying them their occupation. A cabby who chaffed us was little
+better than an irritating blackguard, who should have been whipped.
+
+“When we arrived at Count Louvier’s house--you know we fought in his
+garden--I remember hearing the bell ring about five hundred times
+before they let us in. If anyone had spoken, if someone had made a
+joke, I would have been grateful to him then, Paddy--but we just
+entered the hall of the house in silence, walked straight through to
+the garden, went on down toward the river, and took up our positions
+on the borders of a little thicket of fir, without as much as a
+monosyllable from any one of them. I didn’t like that--you wouldn’t
+have liked it yourself, Paddy.”
+
+“Ye should have whistled an air,” said I, “laughed and joked yourself.
+That puts the iron into them. I remember that I was whistling
+‘Finnigan’s Wake’ when I knocked down Peter Morley, that had me up at
+the police-court afterwards. Ye should have whistled, Harry!”
+
+He smiled at the idea of it, and for some while he would not talk
+again. When he had rested himself and taken a drink of the stuff the
+doctor man gave him--God send me good whisky in such a plight!--he
+told me the rest of it.
+
+“They put a pistol into my hand, Paddy, and it felt just like an iron
+bar. When I saw d’Alençon I wasn’t angry with him, but the devil on
+two sticks could not have cut an uglier figure than he did. The man
+was shooting fire already from his eyes--he couldn’t stand still a
+minute, was here and there and everywhere, but always turning back to
+look at me, as though he would tear my heart out----”
+
+“Ye weren’t behind in that, Harry?” asks I. “Ye didn’t wish him the
+top of the morning, or anything of that kind?”
+
+“No, Paddy--but I was sorry to see him so angry. I had done him no
+injury--what he has suffered--for I know Lea’s story--is in a measure,
+his own fault. Perhaps I had been wiser never to see her at all--I
+used to swear I would cut it every time I left her. If Paris were not
+the smallest city in the world when you want to avoid anybody, I would
+have kept my word. But I think she used to wait for me--hide where she
+knew I would come, and make a fool of herself all the time. That’s why
+the Captain looked like a human devil when he stood opposite to me
+that morning. If he hadn’t hit me with his bullet, I believe he would
+have used the butt.”
+
+“Ay, and a man’s game, too, Harry. ’Tis one I would have had a hand in
+myself--but you shouldn’t have missed him, boy--you used to be handy
+with a pistol, and you shouldn’t have missed him.”
+
+He sighed a bit at this, and I saw that I had wounded his vanity.
+Presently he said:--
+
+“I could have shot him dead, Paddy, if I had wished--but, you see, I
+had Lea in my mind all the while, and I couldn’t be angry about it. It
+is difficult to make you understand it, but when the Chevalier placed
+us on the ground and put the pistol into my hand, I was half afraid to
+look at my man at all, his eyes were so queer. I could think of
+nothing else, Paddy. I didn’t remember that he might hit me; I forgot
+the man altogether; the fight was between me and the ugliest pair of
+eyes I have ever seen. When the word came to fire, I turned very
+slowly and raised my pistol with a child’s arm--I couldn’t look the
+Captain in the face, Paddy.”
+
+“And ye didn’t try to hit him at all, Harry? Will ye tell me that ye
+let the blackguard go empty?”
+
+“I fired when the Chevalier spoke, but I took no aim, Paddy. The
+Captain hung back and looked at me for some minutes before he shot me.
+I remember that there is a little wall running at an angle behind the
+corner of the wood, and over this I could see the river and a barge. A
+woman was steering a great lumber boat, and crying out something to a
+man on the towing path--and I kept asking myself when she would
+disappear from my sight; if it would be instantly in a sudden
+darkness; or slowly, as a picture fades from a sheet. When the crash
+came it was just as though a man had hit me with a hammer and then put
+a branding iron upon my shoulder. I forgot all about d’Alençon’s
+trouble then, and if I had held another pistol in my hand I would have
+shot him, rule or no rule. That’s the truth, Paddy; the pain maddened
+me--I could have crushed his head in my hands, stamped him under
+foot--I no longer cared--I was sorry that there had been no reason for
+his challenge.”
+
+“Shame on you for that. Please God, I’ll shoot him before the week is
+out.”
+
+“No, no, Paddy--I absolutely forbid you to do anything at all.”
+
+“I tell ye I’ll shoot him--right or wrong, I’ll have a bang at him.”
+
+He laughed--just the same boyish Harry Gastonard that won my love
+twelve years ago at Charterhouse.
+
+“He’ll choose swords if you challenge him, Paddy.”
+
+“Then let him choose ’em and be hanged to him.”
+
+He was about to reply when the little witch that Greuze should have
+painted came into the room again--and God forgive me, I told her that
+he had not opened his lips since she went out. It was now almost time
+for him to have his food--so I went up to my own room to write this
+letter.
+
+Be easy, Clara. The Captain is not in Paris, and there’ll be no
+fighting--unless he should return--but of that you shall be the first
+to have the news.
+
+Would my sister have me stand by when my oldest friend is on his back
+and the whole French nation dancing for joy of it?
+
+I’ll do no such thing--shame upon any O’Connell who would. So God
+bless you, Clara--and more will I write when next I have a letter for
+you.--Your affectionate brother,
+
+                                                               Paddy.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER IX.
+
+ [Being a further instalment of the Story from the pen of Paddy
+ O’Connell.]
+
+                                               Hôtel St. Paul, Paris,
+                                                     June 30th, 1905.
+
+Dear Clara,--I address this to you from the Hôtel St. Paul, but I
+would have you to know that I am these two days at Poissy, which is a
+riverside hamlet at the gates of Paris. Harry is here with me, looking
+all his old self, and the little witch of a Greuze girl. We fish all
+day and catch nothing, and at night we listen to the singing when
+there is any. But, oh, my dear Clara, ’tis the oddest folk in the
+world which comes to this place, and no people for the back
+drawing-room at all. But that is between you and me, and need not be
+told to our neighbours at Glendalough.
+
+Ye should know that the Seine winds about Paris, and is here a pretty
+river enough, with a bit of a feathery island and an inn, to which the
+Bohemians come when they are not playing at the theatres. Such a
+company they are! The prettiest women of Paris, dressed in collars and
+straw hats (and not always so much as that upon them), and the
+drollest figures of men that I ever clapped eyes upon. They spend the
+mornings upon the river bank or in their barges, fishing for gudgeons
+which they do not catch; but in the afternoons they go off to make
+love in the woods, and come back as brazen as the colleens from a
+fair. In the evenings we have dinner and music; and pretty enough it
+is to sit out in the moonlight and listen to these merry nightingales
+when they are in the mood to amuse us.
+
+This is the outside of the platter, Clara; but the inside is not so
+pleasing by a long way. For one thing, I have discovered that the
+little simpleton Mimi is head over ears in love with my friend Harry,
+and he is not far short of that with her. And if this was not the
+worst of it, what should happen but that he had a visit last night
+from the very last person in Paris who ought to be seen with him, and
+she none other than the Captain’s wife, Lea d’Alençon.
+
+Oh, ’tis a pretty business entirely, and enough to drive a sane man
+silly. I had believed that he was done with Madame Lea for good (as he
+ought to be, for her folly has got him into trouble enough). The weeks
+that have passed since the duel have hardly brought her name up
+betwixt us. I said that she was back with her husband, who would learn
+to treat her better; when what should happen but that she turns up at
+dusk last night, in a fine automobile with a nigger man driving, and
+is closeted a full hour with Harry to my certain knowledge. To say
+that I was angry is but to express my feelings poorly. You will be my
+judge in that.
+
+It would have been about eight when Lea came. Harry had gone up from
+the boat to the hotel, and I was helping Mimi to carry up the tea
+things, for we had been for a bit of a picnic, and a merry one,
+forsooth. I saw the automobile and a veiled woman getting out of it;
+but the child was the first to recognise Lea, and she had no pleasure
+of the meeting, you may be sure.
+
+“That is Madame d’Alençon,” says she, as pale as a little ghost when
+she said it.
+
+“Madame who?” asked I, not wishing to believe it.
+
+“Madame Lea,” cried she. “How could it be anyone else?”
+
+“Oh, come,” says I, “there’s more than one Madame whom he knows in
+Paris.”
+
+She stamped her foot, just like a wild beast scenting its prey.
+
+“You know it is Madame d’Alençon, Mr. Paddy. Why do you not prevent
+it?”
+
+“What! Shall I bundle her into the car and send her back to Paris?
+Pretty talk if I did that, my dear.”
+
+“She has come here to beg money of him, Mr. Paddy. You know she would
+not come for anything else.”
+
+“What!” cried I. “Don’t you think she is in love with him?”
+
+She laughed at this, long and drolly, the laugh of a woman who is
+shaken by a passion she cannot express otherwise.
+
+“Love--love--oh, what is all this talk of love? Go to her and offer
+money, and then come back and speak to me of love.”
+
+“My dear,” says I, “’tis plain you will never be the friend of Madame
+Lea, in spite of what she’s done for you.”
+
+“Done for me, Mr. Paddy! Oh, yes, yes, yes--she tried to prevent me
+seeing Monsieur Henry again. I remember that, and the English pension
+where I was to be locked up and treated like a school-girl, that she
+might be with him--her lover--while I was away.”
+
+“Her lover! I’ll not have Harry called that.”
+
+“It is true, true,” she said, “and I--I am nothing when she is here.
+Why did he call himself my friend at all? Why did he take me from the
+Fête? I was happy then--yes, happy, Mr. Paddy. Why did he not leave
+me where I was?”
+
+She turned away from me and sobbed just for all the world like a grown
+woman who has come upon the supreme sorrow of her life. To be sure,
+Clara, I was much taken aback, and hardly knew what to say to her.
+Never until this moment had I understood how deeply she loved my
+friend, Henry Gastonard; but here was all her love written down in
+glittering tears which a child would have understood. No longer did I
+doubt the story of her virtue in a society where virtue is never much
+more than a jest. All that had happened up at the Butte and afterwards
+at the Hôtel St. Paul became as clear as the day. Mimi the Simpleton
+was ready to die for the devil-may-care English boy. I had guessed it
+before, but to-day I was sure of it.
+
+“Oh, come,” says I, “’tis hearts that are soon mended when two have
+the will to do it--and, see here,” says I, “will ye be leaving him to
+the black woman who will ruin him, or take a hand in that affair
+yourself? Come up with me to the house now and hear what the lady has
+to say. I’ll engage that neither of us will be behindhand in the
+civilities--and, Mimi,” says I “’tis your duty to go up.”
+
+Well, she would not hear me, but went off in a tantrum down again
+toward the river and the boat. When I entered the house I discovered
+Harry to be closeted with Madame Lea in the little sitting-room upon
+the first floor, and far from pleased she was to see me, as you will
+imagine. A very beautiful, stately woman, as dark as the shadows upon
+a crimson rose and as full of passion as a caged Spaniard. I observed
+immediately that she had been telling the old story to my friend
+Harry, and with no mean success; for he paced up and down like a wild
+beast thinking of the country, and seemed to welcome my intrusion as
+though a special providence had sent me to watch over him.
+
+“You know Madame Lea,” says he, with a wave of his hand toward her.
+
+“If I know her,” says I--and then, “I’ll take leave to ask a word
+after Captain d’Alençon and his health.”
+
+She laughed at this, saying something in French about “these droll
+Irishmen;” but she did not inform me that the Captain was well, and,
+be sure, I was over-anxious about him.
+
+“Is he in Paris, Madame?” I asked her. “’Twould be good news that he
+was in Paris.”
+
+“Monsieur d’Alençon is at Chalons,” says she, blazing up suddenly;
+“he has been transferred there at his own request.”
+
+“Then ’tis to Chalons that you’ll be going presently, Madame?” says I.
+
+She did not reply to this, while Harry looked as foolish as a man can
+look when a woman has put a question to him and he has no mind to
+answer it. For my part, I was never more at my ease, and I sat there
+watching the fair-haired lad and the grown woman, and thinking that
+but for my presence in that same hotel, she would carry him to Paris
+with her for pity’s sake.
+
+“Are you fond of the fishing at Poissy, Madame?” I went on. “’Tis
+little that they seem to catch here and a long while in the catching
+of it. I have taken one gudgeon this day, and my friend two more--but
+you will not have come here for the fishing, perhaps?”--I put it to
+her.
+
+She answered me with a commonplace. Harry appeared to be greatly
+troubled while I spoke, and presently he could stand it no longer.
+
+“Madame d’Alençon is in trouble,” he said, “I am sure you do not
+understand that, Paddy.”
+
+“In trouble?” says I, “then that’s the worst news I’ve heard this day.
+Would it be about the Captain’s going to Chalons?”
+
+“Captain d’Alençon has behaved like a blackguard, Paddy.”
+
+“I won’t doubt it. Let me meet him soon that I may tell him so.”
+
+“He has gone to Chalons and left this poor lady almost penniless.”
+
+“Then let her follow him immediately and see that someone else hears
+of it.”
+
+“She cannot follow him, Paddy. You are talking nonsense. We must put
+ourselves in her position and try to help her. I’m sure that there is
+not a man in Paris, who would be readier to do so than my friend Paddy
+O’Connell.”
+
+I answered this at once--
+
+“If it’s to me that she’s come for advice, why here I am as ready with
+it as the best of them. For all that, her coming was an imprudence,
+Harry, and she’ll allow me to say that she’d have done better to have
+stayed away.”
+
+I said this in English, for I thought that she had no knowledge of a
+Christian’s tongue--but here I must have been mistaken, for she blazed
+up immediately, and said aloud that I had insulted her.
+
+“Who is this man?” she asked him. “Why do you permit him to say these
+things? Is he your friend? No; a friend would not insult your friends.
+I wish to speak to you alone, Harry--have I not the right to ask
+that?”
+
+“Certainly you have, Lea--Paddy does not mean what he says. He will
+understand everything better when I tell him about it afterwards.
+Come, Paddy (this to me), now do be reasonable for once, and put your
+philosophy in your pocket. I am sure you are very sorry for Madame
+d’Alençon.”
+
+“So sorry,” says I, “that if I could meet the Captain this night, I’d
+put him in the river to show the good opinion I have of him.”
+
+They laughed together at this, and then, to change a subject which was
+not by way of being too delicate, Harry spoke of dinner, and the lady
+was quick enough to say “yes.” No one in this country does much
+without eating or drinking before and after they do it; and a better
+ornament for a dinner-table than Lea d’Alençon you would not be
+finding anywhere. She is a stately, vivacious lady, living chiefly for
+the glory of showing herself to the gentlemen of Paris, and of making
+love to such of them as captivate her fancy. Here, at this little inn
+at Poissy, she cut a fine figure enough, and sat down to the table as
+though she were a queen of a mountain kingdom come down from the
+heights to dine with pigmies below. We sat and listened to her talk as
+humble ministers to an acknowledged wit; all of us, that is, but
+little Mimi the Simpleton, and she was silent enough but for one or
+two words of repartee that by no means discredited her.
+
+’Twas as good as the leaping at the Horse Show, Clara, to watch the
+woman and the child upon opposite sides of that table, and to see the
+love that went flying between them. First, it would be Madame Lea
+talking to Harry with the grand air of the woman who finds herself in
+the nursery; then my little Mimi making such a grimace behind the
+lady’s back that I must hold to the table with both hands to prevent
+the explosion that was within me. When Lea asks her quite affably what
+she came to Poissy to catch, Mimi answers as readily, “I came to catch
+myself”--and when Madame went on to say “That is a new kind of
+amusement”--says Mimi, “You are not too old to learn it.” None the
+less, I knew the child was all on fire because Harry talked so much to
+the other one, and I was not a bit surprised when she ran away to her
+own room directly dinner was done, and refused to come near us for the
+rest of the evening.
+
+This would have been about nine o’clock; Madame left us at a quarter
+to eleven when Harry had told her for the twentieth time that he was
+not returning to Paris, and that she must go back alone. I saw that
+his refusal caused her much chagrin, but I will do him the credit to
+say that it was just what I had expected of him. When she was gone,
+and we sat together for a last pipe before turning in, he asked me
+frankly what were his responsibilities toward this woman, and what he
+ought to do for her.
+
+“The man has left her, you see,” says he; “he has made my friendship
+for her the excuse, and gone off with himself to Chalons. None but a
+jealous Frenchman would have planned quite such a devilish revenge as
+that. He doesn’t divorce her, doesn’t talk of a separation; but he
+leaves her in Paris without a sixpence, and then practises the
+moralities. Confess, my dear Paddy, that there is something
+particularly French and subtle in all this. Lea has been accustomed to
+all the luxuries. She is a woman who cannot live without them. Poverty
+to her is something beyond the bounds of imagination--a shadow-land
+too woeful to contemplate. And now d’Alençon thrusts poverty on her.
+He leaves her in a house of glass, whence she can see the pleasures to
+which she is accustomed, but is forbidden to take part in them. Two or
+three chosen servants are there to spy upon her. What alternative has
+such a woman if it be not an alternative of dishonour?”
+
+“Ye speak truly,” says I, “and yet, if I were asked to name the
+biggest fool in Paris to-night, ’twould be this same Captain
+d’Alençon. The man cannot see further than the end of his nose, and
+that, I am sure, is no famous spectacle. Of course, he has no love for
+the woman left, and may be trying to drive her to those devices which
+he suspects, but cannot prove. Your own course is clear, Harry--you
+may help her if you can help her honourably. But you’ll not see her
+again, and you’ll deny yourself because you are a man of honour to
+begin with, and a lover in the second place.”
+
+“A lover, Paddy? What do you mean by that?”
+
+“Just as much as I say, and not a word more. You are in love with
+little Mimi upstairs--I’d cry shame upon you if you were not.”
+
+He was taken aback at this, and did not answer me for quite a long
+while. When he spoke, I knew that I had touched his heart-strings, and
+that he would deny it no more.
+
+“If it’s true, Paddy, what then?” he put it to me.
+
+“Why,” says I, “you’ll leave for London in three days’ time; get
+honourable employment, which will save your fortune, and then come
+back to Paris to marry her--she, meanwhile, having been at some good
+school to soften the manners of her.”
+
+“Do you think they want softening, Paddy?”
+
+“I’m sure of it. Put all this talk of play-actresses and opera singers
+out of your head and come down to the truth. Mimi will make you a good
+wife… but you’ll have to teach her how.”
+
+“She’d never stop at any school, Paddy.”
+
+“Try her and see; and, directly it’s done, go back to London and work
+for your living.”
+
+“Ah,” says he, rising abruptly, “it’s a fine old philosopher come out
+of Ireland after all. Well, my boy, I’ll ask Mimi in the morning, and
+hear what she has to say about it.”
+
+“And you’ll not see the other woman again?”
+
+“Not of my own volition, Paddy… upon my honour, no.”
+
+“Ah,” says I, “and a fine old friend is that same volition when ye
+begin to weigh it up and a pretty woman’s in the balance. But I’ll
+take what I can get,” says I, “and be thankful it’s no less.”
+
+Upon which, Clara, we parted; but how the promise is to be carried
+out, or what the future of such a man may be, God only knows. Now, at
+the very minute of closing this letter, I learn that Mimi La Godiche
+has left the hotel early this morning, and is nowhere to be found.
+Such a thing was not wholly unexpected by me; but what it may mean to
+my friend Harry Gastonard, I prefer not to think.
+
+Never was a man in such a state of misery and despair. I can do
+nothing for him, say nothing, think of nothing. The child has gone,
+and there’s an end of it. But God keep her wherever she may be is the
+prayer of, your affectionate brother,
+
+                                                               Paddy.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER X.
+
+ [Henry Gastonard writes to Paddy O’Connell a letter concerning his
+ search for Mimi the Simpleton.]
+
+                                               Hôtel St. Paul, Paris,
+                                                     July 15th, 1905.
+
+Dear Paddy,--The calamity of your sudden departure from Paris is in no
+way mitigated by the sad news I have to tell you. Mimi is not found,
+nor have I any clue to her whereabouts other than a pitiful little
+letter from her, posted three days ago at Raincy, a suburb of Paris,
+and evidently a sincere expression of her determination not to return
+to me.
+
+That Lea d’Alençon is at the bottom of it all I have not the smallest
+doubt. But there are subsidiary reasons, and one of them your own
+frankness before Mimi concerning my fortune and my future. The idea
+has come to her that I am lost if I remain in Paris. She is madly
+jealous of the other woman, and would have me leave France that I may
+also be quit of the fascinating Lea. Such is the truth, Paddy; such is
+the naïve confession of one whom few would credit with so sure an
+instinct or so faithful an affection.
+
+Meanwhile, as I need not tell you, who stood by me during the dark of
+the day, that my efforts to find her and to bring her back are
+unceasing, and pursued with all the advantage my fortune can bestow.
+Recently I revisited the old haunts at Neuilly, which we re-discovered
+together before your sister’s unfortunate illness recalled you from
+Paris. The quest of the lion-tamer, this horrible monster of a
+Cassadore, was rewarded with success some days ago, when I found him
+in a booth at Conflans, and was immediately admitted to his august
+presence. But he knows nothing of Mimi, nor is it reasonable to
+suppose that even her resolution would carry her again to scenes so
+reminiscent of the phantoms of her childhood.
+
+I say that he knows nothing of Mimi, but this is not to believe that
+he would not hear of her gladly, and press her joyfully to his grimy
+bosom if any opportunity occurred. A truly heroic figure, vast and
+proud and formidable, I found him in a wooden shed behind a crazy
+circus, taking a _plat du jour_ of black bread and ancient beef, and
+making frequent applications to a green bottle which contained an
+unknown but, I doubt not, potent liquor. Upon either side were lions,
+which so delight the simple people of the fêtes and fairs about
+Paris. They were shut off from the passage in which he sat by huge
+beams of timber; but these stood so wide apart that a paw could pass
+at half a dozen places--and you, Paddy, will understand how much I
+enjoyed that interview. For there were lions at the front of me and
+lions at the back of me, and, although some of them seemed half
+asleep, there were others very wide awake indeed, and so playful that
+I wonder I came away with any flesh upon my bones at all.
+
+We spoke between the roaring--no pleasant sound at any time, and
+doubly fearful when you have a lion within a foot of you. I found
+Cassadore quite frank, both about Mimi and his business. The lions, he
+admitted, were half-drugged when he put them through their paces. It
+was true that the great African brute Salambo had eaten his keeper,
+“Sammy,” when he, Cassadore, was away in Paris; but, after all, you
+cannot make Christians of lions by burning them with red-hot irons,
+nor was the “Sammy” aforesaid quite sober when he entered the cage. In
+a voice resounding with dramatic tones, the man described how he had
+returned to find his servant eaten to the very neck--“mais, monsieur,
+the eyes were wide open and staring, and the head was untouched.”
+
+Of Mimi the fellow told me much. He had bought her of an old woman at
+Orleans. There was no other word for it. He saw the child capering
+before a dirty home, and was struck by the readiness and the wit with
+which she answered his questions. Assuming her to be a waif and stray
+entrusted by callous parents to a mercenary hag, he made a bargain on
+the spot, and took Mimi away with him. His further assurance that he
+loved her as his own daughter, uttered between lengthy draughts from a
+capacious bottle, carried less conviction than his story. He had, so
+he said, spent large sums upon her education, and taught her himself
+those charming accomplishments which she displayed at the many fêtes
+her presence graced. Having in turn sold her to me (for it came to
+that), he asked if I thought he had no sense of honour, no finer
+feeling than to play the part of a mean kidnapper, taking young women
+from respectable homes? This I answered immediately in the
+negative--for who would contradict a showman with half a dozen lions
+at his back!
+
+Admit, my dear Paddy, that this quest is not a little pitiful, when
+you remember the object of it. Consider what my acquaintances would
+say of me if they heard that my latest occupation is to search the
+booths about Paris for a child who was capering with a tambourine a
+few months ago, and may now be returned to that employment. With these
+I myself should not argue. There is a day in every man’s life when he
+must stand outside the world’s conventions, break with all common
+tradition, and write the page of action for himself. Such a day is
+mine--I am indifferent to all else but its issue.
+
+This spirit, my dear Paddy, is moving me to employ every agency money
+can command for the recovery of little Mimi. I have just engaged the
+services of Jules Farman, perhaps the cleverest officer in Paris
+to-day, and he is with me in this quest. Our latest call was upon the
+old woman Marie, who lives in a cottage upon the great high road
+between Blois and Orleans. Here we gleaned but little. The child is
+the natural daughter of persons unknown. She was left with a sum of
+money, and a “mother’s care”--do not laugh, Paddy--was bestowed upon
+her. Farman assured me that this hag would not help us, but on the day
+following our return to Paris, he carried me suddenly to the suburb of
+Raincy and declared that he had a clue. Mimi was travelling with a
+rascally showman named Gondré. A hundred franc note would buy her
+freedom--that freedom I would have paid not a hundred but ten thousand
+francs to ensure.
+
+We left for Raincy early in the afternoon and visited the show as any
+bumpkins ready to gape at aged Pantaloon, or to lay our offerings at
+the feet of a rouged and battered Columbine.
+
+The tents were pitched in a clearing of the wood near the
+village--half a dozen of them with sorry spavined hacks grazing round
+about, and as fine a collection of rascality in charge as all France
+could show you. I will not dwell upon the shame with which I
+discovered myself seeking the child in these haunts. I am not easily
+moved to excitements, Paddy, but when we approached this place and I
+told myself that little Mimi had left me for such a life as this, that
+I was about to re-discover her and take her to my house--be sure never
+to leave it again--then, believe me, I lived one of the truest hours
+of life that I have ever known.
+
+I say that we walked about the grounds as ordinary bumpkins, but, be
+sure, our eyes were seeking Mimi everywhere, and the first
+disappointments came when we discovered nothing whatever that would
+justify Farman’s optimism. The man Gondré proved to be a veritable
+clown of the vulgarest kind--a fellow of small physique, mean eyes and
+jaded energies. He stood upon the platform of a booth supposed to
+contain an angry panther, who shared a dinner with a white-haired
+Circassian, and generally displayed tenderness towards her--but when
+we paid our money and went in, we discovered the panther to be nothing
+more than a German wolf-hound, while the white-haired Circassian was a
+lady from the neighbourhood of la Galette, who had resorted with some
+success to the potentialities of common washing soda.
+
+This did not surprise me, but I was disappointed to find that Farman
+was well known to these people, and that I had done better to have
+gone there alone. True, every door opened at his coming, but the
+suspicion remained that these vulgar wits were being played against
+his own, and that they understood perfectly well why he had come to
+Raincy.
+
+From this moment I, myself, despaired of finding Mimi at all. Useless
+for Farman to tell me that she was hidden somewhere in the
+neighbourhood of the fête and that he would not leave without her. I
+began to believe that our coming had been anticipated and Mimi
+removed. It is true that a gleam of hope came to me after dinner, when
+my friend asked me to go with him to a cottage a little way from the
+town and did not hesitate to say that Mimi was there. The place proved
+to be a tumble-down shanty in the very heart of the wood, a mere cabin
+reeking of filthy odours and indescribably damp. Here we found the
+fellow Gondré, and with him a handsome girl, sleek and dark-eyed and
+of the gipsy blood. They received us civilly, and said that they
+believed that the young woman was discovered and would be handed over
+to us. I perceived nothing in their demeanour to awaken suspicion, and
+for the first time I really dared to believe that Mimi was found.
+
+Farman, upon his part, took the affair a little cautiously. I think
+that he feared something, both from the lonely situation of the house
+and the known reputation of those who owned it.
+
+When Farman and I were left alone in the room, no light but that of a
+coal fire in a broken grate, the doors closed, the silence of the wood
+all about us, I detected a certain uneasiness, a readiness to set his
+chair closer to mine and to feel for his revolver, which were some
+comment upon the gallant reputation he bears in Paris. Unable to hold
+his tongue, he recited in low tones the story of the man Gondré, his
+known share in a recent story of crime, the assassinations, robberies
+and assaults of which the law had failed to convict him--and, as
+though this were not enough, he began to blame me for seeking Mimi at
+all.
+
+“She has been bred to this life,” he said, “and nothing will wean her
+from it. What can you hope--to make her your mistress? Believe me, she
+would not live with you a month. Much better to leave her to these
+people and return to London. If she goes with you to-night, she will
+leave you again. I know her kind--there are ten thousand of them in
+Paris, and not an honest one among them. You are risking your money,
+perhaps your life, in this quest. Is the girl worth it, whatever her
+looks?”
+
+It was difficult to answer this--for be sure the man had the logic of
+the argument. I could not enter upon the discussion of my reasons,
+most certainly could not confess to him the whole truth, that I would
+sooner have parted with every shilling of my fortune than have
+returned to Paris without Mimi.
+
+Happily the argument terminated before it had begun--I am quoting from
+you, Paddy--by the sudden appearance in the room of the man Gondré,
+the gipsy girl, and another young woman apparently of some twenty-five
+years of age.
+
+I have told you that there was little light to speak of in this mean
+hovel. A reddening fire, a guttering candle, showed me immediately
+that the newcomer was not Mistress Mimi, nor did she resemble her in
+any way. To be candid, the girl wore an odd and ungainly appearance,
+and I had scarcely blurted out an impatient exclamation when Farman
+laughed aloud and asked, not altogether to my astonishment, “Why did
+you bring that boy here?” Then I perceived the truth--the so-called
+girl was a young actor from a neighbouring booth, and he still wore
+the clothes in which he had delighted the bumpkins of the country
+side.
+
+“Why do you bring that boy here?”
+
+“Mais, monsieur, you are insulting us.”
+
+“Do you wish me to remember your history, Maître Gondré? Now, come,
+no nonsense. Produce the child, and we will make it worth your while.”
+
+The question was direct and demanded an answer. I realised now the
+dangers of our situation. These people understood that we had money
+upon us to ransom Mimi if she could be found. They were determined
+that we should not leave the cabin with that money upon us if any wit
+of theirs, or violence, could extort it from us. To this end the young
+actor had been called from a neighbouring booth. I had no doubt that
+others were being summoned from other booths, and that our position
+must soon become desperate. Meanwhile, the fellow Gondré was
+protesting by the honour of all his ancestors that we had insulted
+him, doing what he could to detain us and showing his hand most
+impudently.
+
+“If this young woman is not the person you seek, I am sorry,” he
+rejoined. “It is not my fault, monsieur. Admit that I have been ready
+to oblige you. I am sure the young gentleman will wish to recompense
+me for my trouble. Is it not so, monsieur--you will be ready to pay us
+for what we have done and for any further information we can bring
+you? Let that be understood, and I will undertake to find the girl
+within a week. But naturally we are too poor to work for nothing.”
+
+I was about to make an answer to this when Farman stood up and replied
+for me. I could see that the situation alarmed him, and that he was
+employing all his wits to extricate us from it. Agreeing apparently
+with the man Gondré’s contention, he said that he would speak to me
+apart and then make them an offer. This, I think, deceived the company
+for an instant, and before they had time to debate it, we were
+standing outside in the wood and the door behind us was closed.
+
+“Run!” he said--“run--or, by God, they will murder us!”
+
+I did not ask him a single question, did not even care to know why a
+man armed with such authority as he possessed should be in danger of
+his life in such a place as the woods by Raincy. It was very late by
+this time, and the thicket about us black, dark, and still. We took a
+path at hazard, and, forcing our way through the brushwood would have
+reached the town of Raincy itself and the railway station there, but
+we had not gone fifty paces before the men were on our track, many
+men, as it appeared by their shouting, and quite open in their pursuit
+of us. I had a revolver with me, and I need not tell you that Farman
+had his, but it became clear to me that these would be of little
+service in such a place. When my companion pulled me from the path and
+dived into a thicket at the edge of a considerable copse, I would not
+have wagered a sovereign upon our chances, nor admitted any but the
+seemingly inevitable conclusion to so sorry an adventure.
+
+We lay in the thicket for a couple of hours, I suppose. If the
+ridiculous nature of the proceeding occurred to me, be sure I was not
+willing to admit it. A man does many foolish things in the name of
+woman, but is not often ready to write about them. And I do believe,
+Paddy, that we came as near to being knocked on the head for a few
+francs as any two men that ever set out upon a Quixotic errand and
+forgot to count the cost of it.
+
+More than once I perceived the slouching figure of the man Gondré, as
+he thrashed the undergrowth and exhorted his brother ruffians to
+diligence. The youth who had disguised himself as a girl came into the
+very place where we lay, and almost stepped upon Jules Farman. This
+was the finest moment of it all, for, had he discovered us, Farman
+would have shot him dead and the rest of the gang swarmed into the
+copse in a moment. I think he was himself afraid of the darkness and
+not unwilling to escape it. When he had gone, a voice from afar called
+him to another covert, and we were left alone.
+
+I should tell you, Paddy, that all this happened at a distance,
+perhaps, of a couple of miles from the town. Had we run for it in the
+first instance, other showmen would have emerged from other booths and
+reinforced the gang, who would have murdered us first and robbed us
+afterwards as cheerfully as they would have gone to the tents to
+exploit the “white panther” from the Indies. For this reason, and no
+other, Jules Farman chose to go to ground, and I could not but admire
+his prudence. When the immediate danger appeared to be abated, he led
+me through the wood, not toward the town of Raincy itself, but to the
+main eastern railway line, and there, by a stroke of good fortune, we
+found a “marchandise” or goods train waiting at a signal cabin, and
+instantly boarded it and were taken to Paris. It was five in the
+morning when I made the Gare de l’Est--an hour later when I reached my
+rooms in the Rue St. Paul and flung myself upon my bed as weary and
+disappointed a man as any in Paris.
+
+For now it is clear to me that the quest of this child is vain, and
+that she has determined to separate her lot from mine, cost her or me
+what it may.--Dear Paddy, yours as ever,
+
+                                                     Harry Gastonard.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XI.
+
+ [Henry Gastonard informs Paddy O’Connell of his probable return to
+ London.]
+
+                                                     July 21st, 1905.
+
+Dear Paddy,--I have received your letter dated July 18th, but I cannot
+say that I have hastened to reply to it. This is very fit and proper,
+for who would dare to reply in haste to a document which contains so
+formidable an indictment.
+
+I am going to the devil, you say, and going, in motor parlance, upon
+my fourth speed. The writing is upon the wall, but I have no eyes to
+read it. A few brief months shall roll and then my inheritance pass to
+the amiable parson at Beldon, and I become a beggar upon the
+streets--or in the poorhouse, as the case may be. So be it, my dear
+Paddy--for what is written is written, nor shall all the tears blot
+out a single line.
+
+Consider the irony of it. I am to earn five hundred pounds a year by
+my own labours. The fortune bequeathed to me by my dear father is not
+to help that undertaking. Useless for me to go into the city, to
+choose a Hebrew at hazard and to say to him, pay me five hundred per
+annum and I will lend you twenty thousand. The Will forbids the trick.
+The money must be earned by me, by my own labour and industry, or my
+cousin must have my fortune. Poor devil, he wants it badly. I have not
+the heart to begrudge him a single penny of it.
+
+But, Paddy, imagine your friend Henry Gastonard upon an office stool
+or seeking half commissions in the purlieus of Throgmorton-street! Of
+talents I have none. I could not earn a shilling by writing for the
+newspapers, or persuade even an enthusiastic friend to set up a bust
+of mine in any hall or cellar in Europe. The world has been to me a
+pleasant place. I have drunk of the fountains of Bimini and quaffed
+draughts of perpetual youth. To dress and drive, to dine, to dance, to
+sing, to sleep--behold my curriculum! I can no more imagine life
+without its music, its laughter, its love than I can depict the
+Châtelet without its Zulema or the Athénée robbed of the art of
+Mademoiselle Yalone. If I have lived in Paris among the Bohemians, it
+is because they stand to me for the fullest impersonation of the _joie
+de vivre_. I may sink to poverty, pass into the shadows of
+obscurity--but to the degradation of the servile state, never, dear
+Paddy, upon my honour.
+
+So your letter leaves behind it but the gratitude of a man who bends
+to the truth but is obstinate to the fact. I am answering it by a
+confession--and one which will not be very welcome to you. Yesterday
+I saw our old friend Lea d’Alençon again and spent many hours in her
+company. She is to be divorced, I understand, and Paris amused by a
+pretty scandal. You know how little this concerns me. You will be very
+sure that my meeting with her was accidental and that I forbore to
+seek her out of my own volition--even as I promised you.
+
+Let me say that it began with a wild dinner given at Charine’s by that
+mad voluptuary, Willy Martin, the American. I accepted his invitation
+because Paris has bored me very much since Mimi went away, and there
+are not enough decent people left in the whole city to keep a
+reasonable man from suicide.
+
+We dined in a room set out to represent a cabin in the mountains.
+There were back cloths of perpetual snow and cooling glaciers, distant
+views of mountain peaks and wonderful pictures of impossible valleys.
+The table was supposed to be a bank of the driven snow, above which a
+cascade suspended its frozen waters. For partners of the feast, there
+were handmaidens in dominoes--beautiful of course, because Willy
+Martin declared them to be so. When I drew a paper from the basin and
+discovered that my particular lot was to be cast with a green domino
+of some magnificence, then I thought of St. Patrick and of you and
+declared myself in luck. Alas, Paddy, I had not been two minutes at
+the table when, despite her domino and a most excellent disguise, I
+discovered that I had the amorous Lea for a companion and that the
+drawing was entirely to her satisfaction.
+
+It is some weeks, as you know, since I have seen this adorable
+creature. To judge by her conversation, she has been on the verge of a
+decline because of my neglect. Almost her first words destroyed that
+fond illusion of her poverty which helped her to win my sympathies
+when she visited me at Poissy.
+
+I no longer believe her story that d’Alençon left her without a
+shilling, although it would appear to be true that his patience is
+exhausted and that he is about to take a quite unusual step for a
+Frenchman, and to divorce her. This, if the tongue of gossip has not
+done her an injury (which is possible), he appears to have the right
+to do; and yet it is delightful to hear her protesting her innocence
+and declaring that all her fault is a love of the light and a positive
+aversion from social darkness.
+
+“I shall go and live in the East,” she said to me in a languorous
+outburst, when the dinner was still young. “I must have sunshine and
+music, Harry--all the sober things are hateful to me; I could never be
+an obedient wife to any man. Of course, I am sorry for my husband. It
+is the privilege of a woman to be sorry for the man she cannot love.
+He married me--I did not marry him. What child in a convent ever
+marries any man, or is to be held responsible for the womanhood which
+comes to her afterwards. Marriage to me was a release from routine and
+the lives of the Saints. I had learned to hate the Saints; I would
+have kissed the feet of any man who closed that dreadful book to me.
+And all the world was opening to my eyes, the great world, immense to
+the childish imagination as the heavens, and as full of golden stars.
+Do you wonder that I leaped for joy when they told me I was to be
+married.”
+
+I had never heard Lea serious before; but I do believe she was serious
+upon this occasion. My promise that if she went to the East she would
+hear little even of the “tom-tom” in a harem, and find the prophet’s
+limitations trying did not move her a hair’s-breadth. Had she not seen
+“The Belle of Teheran” as they staged it at the Bouffes, and did not
+that glittering spectacle of sequins and seraphs stand to her for the
+whole glory of the Asiatic world?
+
+“You would be one of four, Lea,” I said to her, “an adorable quarter
+of a gloomy _ménage_. It is true that you would be permitted to sleep
+upon cushions, and to wash your hands in a fountain, but, my dear
+lady, consider the _dernier cri_ in turbans, and reflect. There is no
+glamour of the East except in the West. Go to the Bouffes when the
+floats are dark, and see what the scenery looks like. Does it remind
+you of anything on earth which is not the apotheosis of the mean and
+the shabby. To me the East stands for a kind of opera comique, which
+is to be suffered only by those who view it from afar. I like to read
+of pashas and pagodas, of temple bells and little Burmese maidens; but
+when I am among them I think of the fleas. You, Lea, would be calling
+for sweet scents and a passage home before you had been in the place
+twenty-four hours. As for the aged Vizier who owned you, I doubt if he
+would have a whisker left in a week. My compassion would go out to
+him.”
+
+Well, Paddy, she refused to see it, and I perceived that for the
+moment some wild scheme of romance is in her head, and may lead her to
+new extravagances sufficiently wild and sufficiently foolish to
+astonish this Paris which loves the bizarre and the daring. She is not
+without rich relatives, and, as she told me to-night, there is an
+uncle at Marseilles who is always ready to befriend her. Men are
+sometimes very gentle toward a woman whose chief enemy is her own
+beauty. Lea will find defenders, whatever may be charged against her;
+and it would not astonish me in the least to hear that she had become
+a queen of the colony at Cairo or a novice among the Benedictine nuns
+at Subiacum. Nothing, indeed, would be too outrageous for the changing
+dispositions of a woman who has drunk of the cup of satiety, and
+already has found it bitter.
+
+Willy Martin’s dinner came to an end, I should tell you, in a blaze of
+glory, which nearly set the restaurant on fire. A nymph, supposed to
+be imprisoned in the ice, but really shut up in a glass case, danced
+a wild _pas seul_ upon the table, and overturned the candlesticks into
+the lap of little Jane Merlot, from the Opera Comique. When her robe
+caught fire--and she could ill spare it--the soda water was employed
+to extinguish the flames--a bright idea, and one which set this
+rollicking company to other notions not less brilliant. From this
+moment, a battle of the corks took the place of that polite talk so
+dear to our forefathers.
+
+I found myself at five o’clock of the morning upon the road to
+Versailles in a forty-horse car driven by Lecallo, of the Opera. Lea,
+in a green domino, soaked to the hems in aerated waters, was at my
+side, and heaven alone knew whither we were going! As for Lecallo, he
+drove like the devil possessed; and before I had quite realised the
+absurdity of the venture, we stood at the door of the Hôtel de
+France, at Chartres, and a pretty crowd of early birds were cheering
+us to the echo.
+
+Such, my dear Paddy, was the first stage of an adventure as ludicrous
+as it was lamentable. I give you my word that I would have paid a
+hundred sovereigns at any moment of it to have been quit of the
+predicament and safely back in my own room at the Hôtel St. Paul.
+This sum I would have doubled when Lecallo, with intentions of the
+loftiest kind, chose to drive his car on to Tours, and left me in the
+Hôtel with one green domino and a crushed opera hat. Now, for a
+truth, was my own position both perilous and impossible. It became
+infinitely worse when Lea, disdaining all other arts, threw herself
+upon her genius for romance and suggested an immediate journey to a
+desert island where none should discover us.
+
+“What has Paris done for us?” she asked me dramatically.
+
+I answered that it had just given us an excellent dinner and a nymph
+in a block of ice.
+
+“Be serious, my dear Harry,” she said; “did you not tell me last night
+that you never wished to see Paris again?”
+
+“Not until the morning, Lea. At night I never wish to see Paris again
+until the morning.”
+
+“Ah, you jest when I am so much in earnest. Take me away, Harry, take
+me from all temptation--to the sea, to the woods--anywhere, if I may
+forget what has been, and learn to hope.”
+
+“But, my dear Lea, does a pretty woman ever cease to hope?”
+
+“She ceases to hope when the man who should be her friend ceases to
+remember. I have been telling myself for the last ten days that the
+luckiest day of my life was the one which determined my husband to
+divorce me. The supreme injustice demands the supreme sacrifice. I am
+now going to blot out ten years of my life and start again from my
+girlhood. I shall leave Paris, perhaps leave France. As I do not
+intend to deceive myself, there will be no part for religion in this
+reformation of a soul. I shall live as all the other good women about
+me. Reputation will be nothing to me, for I shall have nothing to win
+by reputation. Even my name will not betray me, for I shall be Madame
+d’Alençon no more. This is my settled resolution. I am waiting to
+hear how far you, the oldest of my friends, approve it.”
+
+This, my dear Paddy, was the astounding confession this romantic woman
+now poured into my amazed ears. Whether to take it seriously, or to
+believe it to be the natural sequel to a night of frivolity, I know no
+more than the dead.
+
+For the moment I appeared to be confronted by a sudden purpose, and to
+become aware of an aftermath to the harvests of folly. Lea, I said,
+had wearied at last of all that Paris had to give her. Love, light,
+laughter, music--these revolted her, and she would turn from them. It
+might be possible that the tongue of slander had wholly maligned her,
+and that at heart she was a virtuous woman, seeking something as yet
+lacking to her life. Upon this I felt able to pronounce no settled
+opinion. Has not old Georges Oleander written that the one riddle man
+may never solve is the riddle of a woman’s confidence?
+
+“What do you want me to do, Lea?” I asked her baldly. “How can I help
+this wonderful scheme of yours? Do you suggest that I buy a desert
+island and a camping outfit for two? Or shall it be a caravan and a
+month in the forests of Amboise? You have only to say the word.”
+
+Well, this pleased her immensely. She clapped her hands at the novelty
+of the idea, and I could see that the “reformation of the soul” had
+gone to the wall for the time being, at any rate.
+
+“I should like nothing so well,” she said. “A caravan in the
+forest--how absolutely delightful. Did not the Chevalier Leblanc have
+one last year? You remember--it was in all the papers. A motor
+caravan--a little bedroom, a salon, and a kitchen behind it. My dear
+Harry, you could not suggest anything I would like half so well. Let
+us go back to Paris immediately, that I may order my dresses.”
+
+“But, Lea, I don’t happen to own a caravan, and it would take some
+months to build one. Besides, I made no promise to go with
+you--certainly not alone.”
+
+She looked at me amazed. Here was a thing that Lea d’Alençon could
+not for a moment understand.
+
+“My dear Harry, what do you mean? Shall we take a _sergent de ville_
+with us, then?”
+
+“But, Lea, consider our reputations. I grant you that this appearance
+at Chartres is little to our credit, but, at the worst, we can blame
+the car. I don’t think your friends would accept a similar excuse in
+the case of a caravan. We could not say that we burst a tyre and were
+detained for a whole month in the Forest of Amboise.”
+
+She was much piqued. Of course, she did not take my words literally,
+but they were understood in some way as an anticipation of all she had
+been leading up to, and a ready repudiation of it. Her reply intimated
+this in plain terms, and also was very far from that flippant response
+I had expected.
+
+“Are my friends’ opinions anything to me, Harry? Will they be anything
+when I am a divorced woman? Is it really of no concern to you
+whatever, what happens to me afterwards? I do not believe it. Honour
+gives a woman claims which love may deny to her. Are you insensible to
+them?”
+
+“You know that I am not, Lea. My friendship for you would do much, but
+it would not do it upon a false compulsion of honour. The story of
+your life is your own. It would be no kindness to make it mine, nor
+should I permit you to do so.”
+
+“You have never loved me, Harry.”
+
+“I have often said so, Lea.”
+
+“Then why do you not go away from me?”
+
+“Perhaps I shall take you at your word--in a caravan.”
+
+She laughed a little angrily. I could see that she was greatly
+chagrined by our brief talk, but by no means ready to accept it as
+final.
+
+“Would you leave me without a friend in Paris, Harry--must I think
+that of you?”
+
+“You know me better than to think it, Lea.”
+
+“But you are telling me that you mean to go?”
+
+“I am answering you as you asked to be answered.”
+
+“And that is the man--always--always--when the flower is cut from the
+tree, it is already a dead flower to him.”
+
+“Not always, Lea. I have known him to keep it quite a long time--in a
+book. But, of course, the particular man was very young. Now, here is
+our breakfast coming. Is not that a subject more agreeable to you?”
+
+She shook her head, and would not admit the fact. The repast was the
+dullest I have ever shared with the stately Lea, and even the purchase
+of a respectable frock--the best that the city of Chartres could
+discover--did not allay her gloom. In truth, my dear Paddy, she has
+determined to marry me when her husband divorces her, and is dismayed
+to discover that I am not as determined to marry her. For my part, I
+know not what to think, and I am wondering if honour may not have
+something to say to me after all. Certain it is that her husband’s
+jealousy chose me before others for its subject, and chose me without
+a shred of justice or reason. They say in Paris that there would have
+been a reconciliation but for that mad journey of hers to Poissy and
+the inn. You know how little I was responsible for that--you do not
+need to be reminded of its circumstances.
+
+All that has happened to Lea d’Alençon has been of her own seeking.
+For this reason my mood impels me to decline to respond to her
+sentiment or to be deceived by it. Nor am I yet wholly convinced that
+it is real. When we returned to Paris to-night, Lecallo having called
+for us unexpectedly at five o’clock of the afternoon, the first decent
+person we met, upon quitting the Bois de Boulogne, was the Count of
+Marcy, just returned from Dieppe, and upon his way to the Engadine. He
+greeted Lea rapturously, and immediately spoke of a little dinner at
+the Ritz, and of another couple who were to dine there with him. She
+accepted the invitation instantly, and quitted me to go and dress. It
+is true that I promised to meet her to-morrow and to give her a “man’s
+opinion” upon the whole situation; but that promise will not be
+fulfilled. And it will not be fulfilled, Paddy, because Farman has
+just brought me the precious news that Mimi has been traced to England
+and is now engaged with a troupe of ragamuffins playing in the barns
+and booths of my own country.
+
+So I go to London immediately. The decision is irrevocable. And it may
+be that I have seen Lea d’Alençon for the last time.
+
+I will not say I wish it so, for I have called her my friend; but the
+event might be better in the end for her and for--Yours in great good
+hope,
+
+                                                     Harry Gastonard.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XII.
+
+ [Henry Gastonard tells of a visit to his cousin, the Rev. Arthur
+ Warrington, at Lowestoft.]
+
+                                          Hotel Metropole, Lowestoft,
+                                                     July 31st, 1905.
+
+Dear Paddy,--The late Douglas Jerrold remarked that he doted upon the
+sea--from the beach. It seemed yesterday that the sea doted upon me
+when it rolled me like a barrel in my bunk and moved me to appeal to
+high heaven for immediate annihilation. The passage across was about
+as dirty as a Channel passage can be--and that, as you know, you who
+are fond of singing the glories of the deep (when you are on shore) is
+a shade which blackest night cannot surpass.
+
+I made no stay in London save to dine and to sleep at the Carlton. The
+hansom which drove me across Trafalgar Square showed me no amazing
+novelty, nor was I long enough in the city to find the place much
+changed. It is true that there is now a fine bit of life and colour
+where once the dingy old Pavilion stood--for I visited the new
+building after dinner--and Leicester Square seems less shabby than
+formerly; but a man who comes over from Paris is rarely amazed by
+anything that London can show him, and admits her later day claims
+reluctantly. In one matter alone do I find a real advance, and that is
+the newer hotels, which, I venture to think, are just about as good as
+any in Europe.
+
+You did not answer my last letter--possibly because of your
+indignation; it may be because of your want of interest. A man who is
+playing golf by the seashore (for I am convinced you are there) cares
+little for the fact that his neighbour is in a bunker, and less for
+the means by which he may extract himself therefrom. Nor do I expect
+the Paddy of old time to be changed very much from that Hector who has
+washed his hands of me upon more than one occasion, and is quite ready
+to do so again when my letters have made him angry enough. You think
+that I am playing a fool’s game, Paddy, and your silence bears witness
+to the fact. So be it--until we gather scalps together at Portmarnock,
+and I play you for your boots, which, most likely, are unpaid for.
+
+You should know that Jules Farman’s information sent me to London, and
+from London pell-mell to the East Coast of England, where I am to find
+Mimi the Simpleton among a company of clowns, and to withdraw her
+immediately from that humorous if unwashed society. If Farman is to be
+believed, the girl left us deliberately at Poissy, met an old comrade
+of the Fêtes upon the outskirts of Paris, joined his troupe
+immediately; and having acquired the distinction of dancing a Spanish
+dance which is not Spanish, and of playing upon a guitar which is no
+guitar at all, set out with certain vagrants of the city to amuse the
+desperadoes of the outskirts and their obliging families.
+
+This company appears to have prospered for a little while, and then to
+have been drowned, partly by drink and partly by the winds of
+adversity. It broke up at Rheims, sent straggling members on to
+Brussels, there fell in with an Englishman of enterprise, was
+re-organised by him and wafted over to our native country where upon
+the sandy shore or the less accommodating shingle it amuses the
+prosperous of suburbia and bears witness once more to the smallness of
+this terrestrial globe and the fertile resource of its inhabitants.
+
+Admit with me, my dear Paddy, that there is something wonderfully fine
+in this superb independence. Reflect upon the homes you know, the
+motherhood there, the gregarious instincts of childhood, the bonds
+binding even the most wretched--do this, and then put side by side
+with it the life and actions of such a child as Mimi the Simpleton.
+She has not known a home these many years. She cannot have the
+remotest idea of the meaning of motherhood. The streets of a city have
+taught her the great lessons of self-reliance and of self-help. She is
+not afraid to be alone. All the terrors which inflict the man of
+substance, bills payable and bills due, the rise or fall of values,
+doubts concerning the future, the perils of ambition, the bitterness
+of loss, these have no meaning for Mimi the Simpleton. Let the sun
+shine and she will laugh. Give her bread and coffee and she has the
+riches of Crœsus. Take her to a café, where the lights dance and the
+fiddles are busy, and you are opening to her the floodgates of
+Paradise. Fortune is powerless against armour such as this. What
+matters it if the bread be lacking to-day--will not to-morrow be more
+generous? Who shall complain that the sun sets in a cloud, when he
+will rise in splendour at dawn?
+
+You may ask me, Paddy, how it comes to be, if this be Mimi’s creed of
+life, that I would intrude upon it with a more exacting philosophy or
+a friendship that is critical? I shall not attempt to answer these
+questions. I am drawn to this child, I know not by what spell. It is
+not love, as men commonly employ that word. I do not seek, be sure of
+it, to put shame upon her, or to ask her to be the instrument of
+passion. But she has become necessary to my life. The vagrancy of the
+years has brought me to this, that there is just one other vagrant
+upon the road with whom I would share the wigwam, just one other
+little comrade who must help me to light the camp fire and to watch by
+it when the sun has set. To this end I am pursuing Mimi upon this
+Eastern strand. To this selfish purpose I am about to command that she
+shall cast off the Spaniards and remember the lessons of yesterday.
+She may refuse or she may consent--but I shall pursue the issue if
+necessary through the years.
+
+Accompany me, then, to this “gay” resort; follow me to the sandy shore
+of Lowestoft; but particularly, my dear Paddy, to the temporary home
+of my cousin, Arthur Warrington, who is here as a _locum tenens_, and
+has already fascinated a large number of females and a smaller (a much
+smaller) number of pious males. Arthur, I must admit, was not as
+pleased as he might have been to see me. The exclamation that he
+uttered was not altogether ecclesiastical, nor do I choose to remember
+it; but it did not imply welcome, not as you and I understand the
+word. When he had recovered the shock, he confessed to me that he
+believed me to be dying in Paris, and was naturally much relieved to
+find that his alarms were groundless.
+
+“I think you wrote me to that effect, Arthur,” said I. “If I did not
+reply to your letter, pray forgive me.”
+
+“Oh,” says he, blushing to the roots of his beautiful auburn hair, “I
+do not think that I wrote, Henry--I had not your address--but we were
+both distressed, greatly distressed, I will say.”
+
+“Well,” said I, “you seem to have been worrying, Arthur--but say no
+more about it; for here I am as sound as a smacksman and as hungry.
+What’s more, I have come to stop with you for a week or two if you
+will have me, which, if I remember your invitations correctly, is a
+pleasure you have been looking forward to for a long time. Now, isn’t
+it, Arthur? or am I mistaken?”
+
+Well, he stammered and stuttered again, and was in the middle of a
+parable about the green room and the pink room, when in comes cousin
+Martha, who is one of the jolliest little women in Suffolk and as
+clever a flirt as ever was yoked to a parson’s cassock. Be sure Martha
+had her lord and master down in a minute and was trampling upon him in
+two. What! to turn their own flesh and blood into the streets--who
+ever heard of such a thing! Of course I must stay with them. And
+wouldn’t I be useful, too! She thought of that in a minute.
+
+“Don’t you know we’re to have a Pageant here,” says she, “of course
+you paj, Henry?”
+
+“Of course,” said I, “anything that you tell me to do is done
+immediately, Martha. Shall we paj now or await a more solitary
+occasion?”
+
+She expressed some confusion at this, and hastened to explain that
+they were about to have a Pageant at Lowestoft in which they would
+celebrate the early arrival of the Danes in England and the glorious
+victories of Queen Boadicea. There were to be real Norsemen and real
+ships--to say nothing of bloody fights on the foreshore and the
+gathering of the clans upon such heights as this land of marsh and
+marigolds can command.
+
+“Arthur is to be a monk,” says she. “Of course he will be a Protestant
+monk, but he will wear sandals and shave his hair. I am to play a
+British maiden, Harry. I shall wear a bearskin upon my shoulders and
+dye my hair red--now don’t you think it will look beautiful?”
+
+I assured her that nothing could be finer; and “as for the reputation
+of the late Mrs. Astley of glorious memory, whose hair was to be
+wrapped about her feet whenever she stooped to the earth to do it,
+that,” said I, “is already perished.”
+
+This flattery was by no means unwelcome to cousin Martha. She told me
+that they were having great trouble with the townsfolk, who had
+entered into the fray almost with too much spirit--especially a local
+vendor of wines, who wanted to play a modern monk Roger and to roll
+kegs of beer down the hills to the sea. There were many candidates, I
+discovered, for the maidens’ parts, especially such maidens as were to
+be carried in the arms of the barbarians. Not less popular was the
+office of Druid, who would cut the mistletoe provided by the Army and
+Navy Stores and generally conduct the sacred rites as tradition and
+Christmas have sanctioned them.
+
+“And what do you do, Arthur?” I asked the parson, “and what, if you
+please, is a Protestant monk? Forgive the ignorance which remembers so
+little history. Of course it is a showy part, or they would not have
+asked you to play it. You were always a bit of an actor, weren’t you,
+cousin? Don’t you remember when you came out to us at Bordeaux, that
+little Mademoiselle Charcot who----”
+
+He exclaimed, “Hush, hush!”--it is astonishing how rarely a cleric is
+tolerant of reminiscences--and when my cousin little Martha implored
+me to tell her the whole story, Arthur silenced her immediately by an
+answer to my previous question.
+
+“A Protestant monk is one who carried the evangels before the days of
+the Papacy----”
+
+“Then against what did he protest, Arthur?”
+
+“Against the pagan intolerance of his day--just as we protest in our
+own time against the pagan intolerance of the social world. I intend
+to show the people that their vices are not changed from those of
+fifteen hundred years ago----”
+
+“What a lively business. Do you have a band?”
+
+“It is not seemly to jest upon such a subject, Henry.”
+
+“Oh, I know it--pray forgive me. Of course you are quite right. The
+old gods are far from done with yet. Venus, I think, still gets an
+engagement occasionally, and Janus is often looked in the face by the
+morning papers. I admit that there is still something to be said for
+bearskins, while caves should be a godsend to the man who has just
+come down from Carey-street. Why don’t some of you parsons set us an
+example? Sell that thou hast--especially your brewery shares,
+Arthur--and live in a cave. I’ll bet you what you like that cousin
+Martha in a bearskin would fill your church every Sunday though half
+the bishops in England were at the shop opposite.”
+
+“The shop, Henry! Has Paris taught you to call a church a shop?”
+
+“In Paris, my dear Arthur, there are no monks. The Government has done
+the protesting.”
+
+“For the good of France, undoubtedly. The pure religion.”
+
+“Your religion, Arthur--but look here, I’m not out for a theological
+argument. Let us talk of the Pageant. What does Martha suggest that I
+should play?”
+
+“Would you like to be a knight in armour, Harry, and buy your own
+armour?”
+
+“That’s a generous proposal, Martha. Did knights in armour come over
+with the Danes?”
+
+“Oh, dear, no--I had forgotten that. Suppose you were a Norseman with
+beautiful long hair----”
+
+“To match yours, Martha? Arthur wouldn’t like that.”
+
+“But a Norseman was such a splendid creature. You would have to speak
+in a guttural voice, Harry, and carry a scimitar.”
+
+“It sounds well, Martha; but I should prefer the cellarer’s part. I
+could look after the wine vats very well. If that’s not it, how would
+you like me to play Henry the Eighth on the Field of the Cloth of
+Gold? I could get the costumes from Fox’s; and I tell you what, if you
+want any humour, I’ll drive on to the course in my motor car.”
+
+Arthur raised his eyes to heaven at this, while Martha seemed not a
+little affronted. They were both very serious about this business,
+poor dears, and not a little concerned for its success. To pacify
+them, I fell in with the Norseman idea, and then sat down to tea.
+
+You can have no idea, Paddy, of the meaning of these pageants to
+country towns, or of the enthusiasm they excite. People are in and out
+of this house every ten minutes to consult the “Master.” Young girls,
+who would have blushed to show their ankles yesterday, are popping
+themselves in skins and sandals with the glee of children. There is an
+eloquent Free Church Minister staying here who preaches twice every
+quarter against the theatre, and is now about to appear as a Druid
+priest with a sickle. He rehearses his part like any actor at the
+Haymarket. Frivolity is immediately resented. When I suggested that a
+fleet of motor-boats should bring the Norseman to the shore, just to
+contrast the old ideas with the new, shocked looks met me, and an open
+protest. The most trivial mistake costs its maker a reproof. I have
+just heard Arthur deliver a sound rating to a wretched tailor who
+thought that a Dane might very well carry a musket, and produced one
+left to him by his great-grandfather. The majesty of the Pageant
+brooks no levity.
+
+It will be apparent to you that I had little opportunity for any
+really private talk with my beloved cousin during these first days of
+my arrival, nor does there appear any possibility of my finding one
+until this mummery is over. For that matter, I am very doubtful of the
+utility of such a proceeding, nor do I think that I shall profit by
+it. A sportsman would consent to my plan immediately; but Arthur is
+not a sportsman. I shall propose to him that we divide the
+inheritance, and have done with it; but I know from the outset he will
+find some shifty plea upon which he may excuse himself. If he does, I
+am what the world calls a ruined man--which is to say, Paddy, that I
+must work for my bread like any other decent fellow, and not complain
+if the loaf is yesterday’s.
+
+Sometimes I admit that the change will be stupendous. I have wanted
+for nothing, as you know, since I was a little child. My poor father
+indulged me in every way, so that now, at the mature age of
+twenty-four, I am as blasé as many a man of forty. All that any sane
+bachelor can need is to be purchased by seven thousand pounds a year.
+I can run a motor-car, keep a small sailing yacht, hire a shoot,
+travel. I need no house, for the finest hotels are open to me, with
+all their luxuries. From that to abject poverty is to be a swift
+descent. Paddy, I shall have a subsistence, but nothing more. The rest
+will go to dear cousin Arthur--to the glory of God and the purchase of
+a manor-house he has his eye upon.
+
+Meanwhile, there is always Mimi. Would she come to me, I wonder, if I
+were poor? It might be so; in which case one of the Beatitudes would
+again be justified, and Harry Gastonard awakened in an instant from
+his lethargy. I shall ask her this question when I find her--to-night
+or to-morrow, as the case may be, Paddy.
+
+Meanwhile, waft me your blessing across the emerald seas, and find me,
+as always, Your friend,
+
+                                                     Harry Gastonard.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XIII.
+
+ [The Reverend Arthur Warrington writes in all haste to his Solicitor,
+ Mr. James Frogg, of Serjeant’s Inn, Strand.]
+
+                                             St. Philip’s, Lowestoft,
+                                              Feast of St. Alphonsus.
+
+James Frogg, Esq.
+
+Dear Mr. Frogg,--I am writing in much haste to inform you that my
+cousin, Henry Gastonard, has returned from Paris, and has had the
+effrontery to come here.
+
+I trust I am not lacking in charity, nor harder than my fellows, but
+the life this young man has led in Paris makes him no fit companion
+for my wife, who, I regret to say, appears to have taken a fancy to
+him, and insists upon his remaining with us.
+
+I write, therefore, to ask you if this will imperil in any way my
+hopes under the will of Martha’s uncle; are we doing right to have
+Henry here, and is there any possibility of the judges construing this
+as a consent upon my part to any division of the valuable property?
+Please inform me at once that I may convince Mrs. Warrington of her
+folly, and put an end to this foolish infatuation.--Dear Mr. Frogg,
+yours very faithfully,
+
+                                                   Arthur Warrington.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XIV.
+
+ [Paddy O’Connell apologises for his silence.]
+
+                                        The Dormy House, Portmarnock,
+                                                     August 3d, 1905.
+
+Dear Harry,--I should have told you before that you did wisely to
+leave Paris, and, please God, to see that “iligant faymale” no more.
+’Tis many a man that goes to the devil when he might have gone any
+other road for the asking of a cheap ticket--and you, I am glad to
+see, are now restored to your senses and safely back in the land of
+the Sassenach, where I wish you much prosperity. You have wits of your
+own, man, and a lively presence. Let me implore you to use them in
+some honorable occupation, if it is only to spite that long-legged
+beggar of a parson, who would drive the very saints out of heaven
+should he by any chance arrive in the neighbourhood of that highly
+praised locality.
+
+Meanwhile, Harry, I am waiting for your news of Mimi. What a droll
+little witch she was to be sure--and, man, ’tis lucky for ye that I am
+your friend, or the Lord knows where she would have landed me. Seek
+her out by all means and restore her to civilisation. Ye’ll never need
+to be ashamed of her in any company. There are women who are born to
+be the light of men’s lives; and if ever I saw one of the kind, the
+little lady whom Greuze should have painted is one of the company.
+Find her, I say, and play a gentleman’s part towards her. You’ll never
+regret it, my boy.
+
+I am writing you but a brief letter, for the golfers here have been
+playing games upon this old bird and ruffling his plumage excessively.
+Yesterday, young Willie Jackson made me a bet of a sovereign that he’d
+drive a ball off the face of his watch, and I took him immediately.
+Well, he goes out to the tee as cool as a martyr at the stake, pops
+his watch down on the sand, sticks a ball on the top of it, and
+smashes the whole lot to blazes. You could have heard me laughing two
+holes off as I paid the money and chaffed him.
+
+“’Tis to the watchmaker ye’ll be taking that same,” says I, “and
+asking him what’s wrong with the works?”--for there wasn’t a ha’p’orth
+of the watch left, not enough to put in a teaspoon. To which he
+answered, as impudent as anything:
+
+“I think not, Paddy; it was a penny watch I bought in Dublin three
+days ago.”
+
+Ye may think that I didn’t show my nose in the club-house any more
+that day, Henry. And, as if this wasn’t enough, young Philpots
+persuaded me to play him with one of those pneumatic balls to-day, and
+a fine game he had with me. The harder I hit it--and you know that
+driving is my pride, being able to outdrive any man in Ireland when I
+hit one--the harder I hit it the shorter, so to speak, it went, until
+some of my finest brassies weren’t travelling twenty yards, and my
+cleeks not ten.
+
+“Be hanged to the ball!” says I at last, “I believe it’s bewitched.”
+
+“Oh, come,” says young Philpots, “nothing of the kind Paddy; ’tis your
+precious bad driving. Now, what did you drink with your dinner last
+night?”
+
+“Not more than half a pint of whisky, and perhaps not so much.”
+
+“Then your eyesight must be going, Paddy. I’d see a doctor if I were
+you when I got back to town.”
+
+“There’s no better eyes in Ireland,” says I; and I picked the ball up
+and put it in my pocket. After that I knocked young Philpots all to
+blazes, so I knew it was the ball, and would have said so if the
+Archangel Gabriel himself had come along and denied me. When I got
+back to the club-house, I took young Martin, the pro., aside, and
+asked him a few questions.
+
+“Why did ye sell me such a thing of a ball as that, Martin?” I asked
+him.
+
+He professed great astonishment.
+
+“There’s nay a better baa’ made,” says he.
+
+“Will ye play a round with it yourself, Martin?”
+
+“Ay, when there’s wind in it.”
+
+“Wind!” cried I, beginning to understand.
+
+“True,” says he, “when there’s wind in it; but no’ when a gentleman
+has pricked her wi’ a needle before the other gentleman ganged oot.”
+
+Henry--I saw it in a moment! That young devil of a Philpots had let
+all the air out of the ball before I began to play with it. The
+story’s all over the place--I’ll never show my face here for a month,
+unless it be to pull the noses of the pair of them for the pleasure of
+saying good-bye to such jovial companions. My dear Harry, yours as of
+old,
+
+                                                     Paddy O’Connell.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XV.
+
+ [“The Chimes” at Yarmouth, and what Henry Gastonard learned of them.]
+
+                                         The New Vicarage, Lowestoft,
+                                                    August 6th, 1905.
+
+Dear Paddy,--Byron told us that:
+
+
+ “Christians have burned each other, quite persuaded;
+ That all the Apostles would have done as they did.”
+
+
+I am not quite sure that my dear cousin, Arthur, would not put me
+immediately to the stake were it not for this worldly little wife of
+his, who leaps through the hoop of his philosophy like a clown at the
+circus, and is never so pleased as when her antics move him to
+paroxysms of jealousy.
+
+Let me, none the less, postpone for the moment a narration of this
+particular tragedy, and thank you for your letter. I am sorry to hear
+that they let the wind out of your pneumatic golf ball, and so
+provoked you to expressions not found in the catechism--but, my dear
+Paddy, is not half the world flogging balls so treated, and are not
+the fortunate few those who can command a superfluity of that
+necessary gas by which mankind achieves success?
+
+I give you this for consolation. Would to heaven you could console me
+as effectually. For, to be candid, Paddy, I am as hard driven by my
+doubts as ever a man was in this world. Yesterday I saw Mimi for the
+second time. My first visit was paid to her almost immediately after I
+had written to you; and a sorry enough pilgrimage it was, so full of
+drab shades and mournful harmonies that I write of it with reluctance,
+and do not speak of it at all.
+
+Recollect that I had traced the child to the old town of Yarmouth, and
+was determined to seek her there. Of course, my car is here, and
+serves me well at these times. A fast journey in the famous “forty,”
+which has carried us together upon many a merry venture, brought me to
+that fishing village they call Gorleston; then to an even more crabbed
+street--the main thoroughfare of Yarmouth to wit. I know nothing of
+these places, but the approach to them depressed me greatly, and left
+me but ill prepared for the really superb sea-front which a side
+street of Yarmouth presently disclosed to me.
+
+It is inconceivable, Paddy, that such a parade as this should be so
+little known to the children of civilisation. Depict a wonderful
+strand of the purest golden sand, a gentle sea with many ships in a
+narrow street, a wide thoroughfare abutting upon the promenade, and a
+mile of houses as a background to it all. Do this, I say, and you will
+still have the poorest idea of Yarmouth--for its glory lies in the
+booths they have erected upon the sand, and in its entertainments, its
+wide piers, its floral halls, its orderly gardens, and superabundant
+bandstands. Such a city upon a seashore I have never seen in all my
+life. I drove my car to a decent hotel on the front, and I descended
+presently, feeling as lost as an African set down suddenly at
+Ludgate-circus.
+
+This would have been about a quarter to eight o’clock of a splendid
+summer evening. Thousands of lights were now blazing upon the
+promenade, lights large and small, and of all the hues of the rainbow.
+Turn your ears where you would, music pleased or offended them. And
+what music, Paddy!--now that of a fine military band, again of a
+hurdy-gurdy, and upon that the tinny notes of a worn piano,
+laboriously thumped by some child of the academies. Nor was this
+sufficient, for youths passed raving of Jenny or Sarah, and here and
+there a woman screeched some incoherent lines which the music-hall or
+the sea beach had taught her.
+
+I crossed the street, and ventured upon the golden sands. The
+barbarity of the scene impressed me strangely. That such an artist,
+such a born child of all that is really the fruit of genius as Mimi
+the Simpleton, should have sunk to this, inflicted me with an
+intolerable melancholy which nothing could relieve.
+
+Here, Paddy, here I must find Mimi the Simpleton. To this _ultima
+thule_ some inspiration of the nomad’s life had wafted her. You can
+have little idea of the emotions which followed me to the quest of her
+as I threaded the human lanes, and would have closed my ears to their
+voices, but could not.
+
+But I will not weary you with a recital to so little purpose. Let it
+be sufficient to say that when I discovered Mimi at last, it was not
+upon the lower sands where the meaner booths are set, but in a
+considerable wooden structure built almost against the promenade, and
+promising at least a better atmosphere and a better company.
+
+Here a bill at the door informed that “The Chimes” were performing,
+and that for the inconsiderable sum of sixpence I might be privileged
+to hear the famous singer Wat Urling in his famous song “Bonny Bill,”
+and also to witness the gyrations of the Spanish dancer “Alphonsine.”
+Other lines accorded notoriety to a certain Jack Bendall, and to a
+person by the name of Bertie Idden, who, it appears, had played the
+banjo before the crowned heads of Europe, and was still alive to tell
+the tale. These promises I read swiftly, and, paying a shilling for
+the front row, I passed into the place, and saw Mimi again.
+
+It was a quaint scene, Paddy. Some fifty square yards were fenced in
+by a wooden awning and provided with benches and garden-seats. The
+platform at the further end had a torn Union Jack for its emblem, and
+a Spanish flag to cross it. Here stood a piano, and two or three
+chairs for the performers, of whom there appeared to be five,
+including the lady accompanist. All were dressed in quasi-Pierrot
+costumes of black and yellow; and Mimi, I observed, wore precisely
+similar garments to the men.
+
+As to the entertainment, it consisted of a part-song sung in three
+keys and wofully discordant; but Mimi left the group at the end of it,
+and returned shortly afterwards in a black spangled dress and a quiet,
+respectable mantilla.
+
+I took my seat in a garden-chair to the left of the stage, and watched
+the child closely. She had not seen me, and I perceived that her whole
+soul went out to this business of the dancing. Perhaps it stood to her
+for a reflex of Paris in a dismal land. I can imagine her recalling
+the balls of the Butte--all the familiar faces of the Quat-Z-Arts--and
+believing for the time being that the music was made by Jean Delmas,
+and that Chardibert was her partner in the dance. She had no talent
+for such a class of entertainment--so much I confess at once. Her
+dancing was spirited, but inelegant; she threw herself about with the
+uncouth gestures of a child at play. When she sang, it was not in
+Spanish, but in that argot of the atelier, which even a Frenchman in
+the audience might not have understood. But I understood it, Paddy;
+and, as though she were speaking to me alone of all the company, I
+watched her intently until her eye caught mine, and she ceased to
+dance as suddenly as though a strong man held her ankles to the floor.
+
+This was for the merest fraction of a minute. A seedy individual in a
+long grey overcoat--or rather, an overcoat which had once been
+grey--strode forward from his nook behind the piano and addressed her
+in rough tones. She answered him with a nod, and continued to dance
+immediately, which provoked a whole torrent of bad language, and a
+subsequent draught from a substantial flask when the back of the piano
+somewhat hid the man from the audience. Mimi, upon her part, now
+danced on as though she had never seen me at all. I did not catch her
+eye again, not once, until the entertainment was done and the people
+had quitted the enclosure.
+
+Be sure, however, that I had no intention of leaving without seeing
+her. That would have been a folly surpassing all. No sooner was the
+crowd departed than I walked up to the platform and spoke to her in
+the French she understood so well.
+
+“Bon soir, Mimi. Shall we go and fish for gudgeons at the Châtelet?”
+
+“_Ah, mes enfants_--it is Monsieur Henry who has come back.”
+
+“What are you doing in this place, Mimi?”
+
+“I am dancing, Monsieur Henry.”
+
+“I see perfectly well; but you are tired of dancing, and are now going
+to return to Paris with me.”
+
+“That is impossible, Monsieur Henry. I have not got a boat.”
+
+“But I shall buy one. Go and tell these gentlemen that you can dance
+no more for them. I shall wait until you have done so.”
+
+She shrugged her shoulders defiantly.
+
+“Does Madame d’Alençon send you here, Monsieur Henry?”
+
+“I will tell you when you have spoken to your friends.”
+
+She was about to answer me when the greasy man stepped forward and
+intervened. He spoke in the jargon of the music halls.
+
+“’Ere,” he said, cocking a vile cigar in the corner of a huge mouth,
+“and what’s all this?”
+
+“I have come to take this young lady to her friends,” said I.
+
+“Ho,” cried he, “and ’ave you? Well, a bloomin’ long journey that’s
+going to be. ’Ere, you clear out of this--we don’t ’ave none of your
+sort ’ere.”
+
+I stepped up upon the platform and looked him squarely in the face.
+
+“My man,” said I, “by whose authority did you take this girl from her
+home, and when will you show it to the police?”
+
+He turned a little pale, and took his cigar from his mouth hurriedly.
+
+“What’s that to you?” he asked.
+
+“It is everything to me,” said I, “as you will presently discover.”
+
+“Is she ’ere against ’er will, then? Arst ’er yourself. Ain’t I givin’
+’er advantages? Who says I took ’er from ’er friends--who says it?”
+
+“I say it, and presently will prove it.”
+
+“Oh, you do, do yer? Well, my name’s Jack Bendall, and my ’ome’s the
+Pav. at Ealing. Now go and prove it--let me see you do it. Why, half
+the profession will answer for my character. Who’s going to answer for
+yours--and who the deuce are you, all said and done?”
+
+He did not wait for me to answer, but called Mimi up to him.
+
+“Do you know this man?” he asked her.
+
+“Yes, Monsieur; that is Monsieur Henry.”
+
+“Is ’e related to you?”
+
+“He is one of my friends--I knew him in Paris.”
+
+“A--student, I suppose. Just as I thought. Well, now ’e’s going out of
+’ere, and right sharp, too.”
+
+Imagine the fellow’s impudence, Paddy. He strode up to me in a
+threatening attitude and laid his hand upon my collar; but not a
+second time, for I tripped him before you could count two, and threw
+him headlong down among his own stalls.
+
+“Hands off,” I said when he had picked himself up, “and learn to
+behave yourself. I am now going to the police station. You can follow
+me there if you like.”
+
+I did not wait a moment longer, but marched from the place--Mimi
+watching me with wide-open eyes, another woman snivelling on the bosom
+of her “poor Jack,” and that worthy himself close upon my heels. As it
+turned out, my car stood within twenty yards of the place, and the
+sight of it with the great flaming headlamps and the gaping crowd
+about it sobered the clown immediately. He pushed up to me with a
+sidling gesture and spoke his first civil word.
+
+“No offence meant, guv’nor. Gawd witness I never ’armed the girl.
+Don’t be ’asty like. So help me ’eaven, my own daughter ain’t been
+treated better. Now, what’s it all about--you ain’t going to do
+nothink imprudent, guv’nor?”
+
+I turned upon him and took him at his word. After all, I had no case
+for a police-court, and he might have beaten me hollow there. It was
+prudent to temporise, and I did not lose the opportunity.
+
+“I am the guardian of this child,” said I. “Your honesty is not at
+stake if you listen to reason. I don’t hold you responsible for her
+appearance here, but I must speak to her immediately. Show me where
+that can be done, and we may settle the affair yet.”
+
+“If that’s all, guv’nor, you can speak to ’er in the show and welcome.
+I didn’t know I was talking to a gent like you--though. Gawd’s truth,
+I’d pay a fiver to learn that fall.”
+
+“Oh,” says I, showing him a five-pound note, “no need to try it a
+second time. Take the company out and give them supper at my expense.
+I suppose that’s your last show to-night?”
+
+“The last’s at half-past nine. You can ’ave twenty minutes with her.
+She said her name was Mimi Oliver and that she came from Bordeaux. Is
+it the truth, guv’nor, or a lie?”
+
+“It’s a lie,” said I. “She left my house in Paris to go to you. Now
+leave us together, please; I have much to say to her.”
+
+He nodded assent, and I went up to the platform again. The show was
+quite deserted by this time, and the performers made a hasty supper in
+the corner over by the piano. As for Mimi, she sat upon a bench a
+little way from the others, dressed in her spangles and wearing that
+pretty smile I have never yet been able to fathom as long as I have
+known her. Whether she was pleased by my return, or still angry, I
+cannot say. But I went up and sat beside her; and then I knew, Paddy,
+that nothing but her courage kept her from weeping.
+
+Of this interview, with its new issue, of all that she confessed to
+me, and of my plans for her, a letter to-morrow must tell you. I am
+but just in time to catch the post, and, to be plain with you, old
+friend, my heart is full of a sadness I cannot define and would write
+of to no other. The memory of this interview recalls it powerfully.
+Let me then sleep upon it all--and bidding you a hearty good night,
+remain--My dear Paddy, your friend,
+
+                                                     Harry Gastonard.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XVI.
+
+ [Henry Gastonard gives a further account of his meeting with Mimi the
+ Simpleton.]
+
+                                         The New Vicarage, Lowestoft,
+                                                    August 8th, 1905.
+
+Dear Paddy,--I was too seedy to write to you yesterday, nor did my
+good cousin’s chatter concerning the things of this world help me to
+get better. Arthur is the kind of man who buys in an earthly market
+and would realise in a celestial. He began to talk of motor securities
+this morning, and did not cease until he was called to the church for
+Litany--but he went with thunder on his brow, for little Martha
+insisted on shewing me the greenhouses meanwhile, and the man is as
+jealous as Othello.
+
+You will readily imagine that I linger in this house chiefly for the
+comedy of it. I believe that Arthur would have told me to go this
+morning if pretty Martha had not cut in before him. “Arthur is so
+delighted to have you here,” says she, looking hard at him across the
+table, “there are so few educated folk in these parts that it is a
+real kindness for any friend to come and see him.” You should have
+seen the black looks he cast back at her. I do believe the poor man
+nearly choked himself with the toast he was eating.
+
+I shall go over to the hotel at Yarmouth to-morrow, Paddy--later on,
+perhaps, from there to Cromer, where Mimi goes with the troupe. So
+much tells you in a word that I have not persuaded her to quit the
+gentleman of the cockney accent, or to forsake the delights of posing
+before an ignorant multitude as the Señorita Alphonsine. What is in
+her mind I do not know for any certainty. She understands, she must
+understand, that I have no interest in Lea d’Alençon, and never had.
+But a jealous woman, more especially when the Butte has taught her to
+be jealous, is one of the most incomprehensible of all mysteries, and
+such, I begin to fear, will our little friend Mimi remain.
+
+I talked to her very frankly the other evening, perhaps as frankly as
+ever I spoke to her in all my life.
+
+“You left me at Poissy because Madame Lea came there,” I said--and
+then I asked her--“Was that just, Mimi? Could I prevent her coming?”
+
+To which she answered:
+
+“You could have prevented it, Monsieur Henry. No woman goes to a man
+who does not wish to see her--she writes to him.”
+
+I laughed at this. How like the Mimi of la Galette.
+
+“Of course, old Georges Oleander taught you to say that. I remember it
+was one of his great, also foolish, sayings. Those were famous days,
+Mimi. I wonder what you would have said if I had forbidden you to see
+Mr. Barrymore or Count Charles, or any of the friends you used to
+know? Suppose I had been jealous, as I had the right to be----”
+
+“But you, you, Monsieur Henry--you were not my lover; why should you
+be jealous?”
+
+“Mimi,” said I, “we are going to forget the past just as we would
+forget a sad book that we have been reading. What is to prevent us? I
+shall never see Madame Lea again. If I saw her a thousand times, it
+would make no difference. You know that I love you, Mimi. How often
+must I say it to make you believe?”
+
+The words moved her to some emotion. There is no more intelligent face
+in Europe than hers, none more beautiful; and I could see that the
+child was wrestling with some great temptation, unknown to me, and
+unconfessed.
+
+“It would be folly to speak of it, Monsieur Henry,” she said
+presently; “I am not fit to be your wife. You are rich, and we are no
+longer at the Maison du bon Tabac. I tried to follow you out into the
+world, Monsieur Henry, but I lost you there--and I shall never find
+you again.”
+
+“Mimi,” said I, “there has always been this between us. You call me
+rich, but in a few months’ time I may be poorer even than these people
+who employ you. Is not that enough for you? Shall I make myself poor
+to-morrow because riches keep you from me? Is that your wish, Mimi?”
+
+“I know the truth,” she said quietly; “your great Irlandais told it to
+me. You are rich, and if you work you will remain rich. Do not believe
+those who tell you that the poor are happy, Monsieur Henry. That is
+what the rich say to defend themselves. Oh, do you think that I can be
+happy so far away from France and among these strange people? Would I
+not return to-morrow if I could do so?”
+
+“You shall return, Mimi--we will go together.”
+
+She laughed drolly, turning the pathos of it with the cleverness a
+born actress alone could command.
+
+“To the Butte,” she cried, “on the high road? We will sup at the Lapin
+Agil and breakfast at the Capitol. That’s what I dream of when I dance
+before the people--but you are not in my dreams, Monsieur Henry; I
+think of a Paris which you have left--I do not see you any longer
+among my friends.”
+
+“Because you yourself have determined that it shall not be so.”
+
+“No--because you were not born of us; because you are an Englishman
+who has work to do in your own country. I am in my own world even in
+this poor place. It is not your world--it must never be so.”
+
+ * * * * *
+
+This was the sum of it, Paddy, often repeated. This child believes
+that all my love for the Butte and its people is but a sham affection,
+that it will pass, that I am born to riches and position. She is
+clever enough to think that a marriage with me would be a false step,
+leading neither to her happiness nor to mine. All this fine philosophy
+of hers is no sounder than the bloom upon a flower. If I could conjure
+up the old house in Paris, people it with the old figures, recall the
+old precarious life, the days of poverty, the days of comparative
+riches, the empty cupboards, the chiding corks--if I could do this,
+and say, “Mimi, come back to me,” she would be in my arms in an
+instant. But she is afraid of her new situation; London has chilled
+her finest instincts--she can think of me but as the “great Monsieur
+Henry, of the Hôtel St. Paul.” And between me and her a great barrier
+is fixed.
+
+How to combat this argument I know not. My threat to shed myself of my
+money is both idle and impossible--it is the word one whispers to a
+woman in an ecstasy of passion, and repeats with a shamed grin next
+morning. I feel, Paddy, that I could not support poverty--and yet here
+is poverty staring me already in the face, and promising, like the
+Devil in “Faust,” that he will have me some day. To you I put the
+problem, for God knows I can make little of it. Is there any way--any
+sane way--by which I can win this child’s love and make her my wife?
+Would it be a crime to do that? Am I a madman to be thinking of it at
+all? Write to me, old friend, and speak in plain terms. The Paddy of
+the old time was never ashamed to do that.
+
+You may address your letter to the vicarage, for little Martha will
+see that everything is forwarded. I am tired already of this
+lantern-jawed cousin of mine, who nagged his wife for three hours last
+night because she would not turn me out, and prayed before breakfast
+this morning for charity. I heard them quarrelling; the wall was not
+thick enough to keep those dread sounds out--but she silenced him in
+the end, though how, I do not know. When next I saw her she was
+wearing a bearskin on her shoulders, and her hair was the colour of a
+terra-cotta house. They are to have the first dress rehearsal for the
+Pageant to-morrow--and Arthur, who has just preached another sermon
+against the theatre, is to be there with a megaphone.
+
+God bless him! He is the poorest creature in Suffolk, though not in
+the least aware of the fact.--Dear Paddy, yours dolefully,
+
+                                                     Harry Gastonard.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XVII.
+
+ [Paddy O’Connell lays down the law.]
+
+                                                         Glendalough,
+                                                   August 12th, 1905.
+
+Dear Harry,--What I would have you to do is to set about getting your
+living. ’Tis honest advice and the best I can give you--though it’s
+precious little I do in that line myself, and a poor hand I would be
+at the employment if my father--God rest his soul--had not done the
+business for me.
+
+I am little acquainted with the art of money-making, and no wise
+adviser in that matter. But I see plainly enough that if you do not
+set about earning your living, this parson man will be banking your
+fortune and thanking God for it, while you will be next door to a
+beggar in the streets, and a mighty unsuccessful one at that.
+
+Let me ask you what you could bring to the child if you lost your
+fortune. This gipsy notion is well enough when a man follows it by
+choice; but there is a time of life when you begin to sniff at the
+cooking-pot and to ask how many thorns are in your bed before you--and
+you will come to that before most of us, by reason of the habits you
+have acquired. Indeed, Harry, I am not sure that you understand at all
+what this loss of fortune may mean to you, nor do I believe your life
+will be worth living when you have lost it.
+
+You are young, you have a fine presence, people take a liking to the
+looks of you, you are by no means wanting in brains. Should you get on
+the Stock Exchange you would find clients enough--or, for that matter,
+you might turn your Art knowledge to some advantage and see what you
+can do in that line.
+
+Shake your wits together, my boy, and make a start, to-morrow if you
+can. I couldn’t do it myself--unless I were taken up by those who
+would learn to ride, or golf, or play a decent hand at bridge; but you
+can do it, Harry, for you have the brains; and if you love this little
+girl out of France, and if your heart is full because of her, you will
+lose no time in following my advice and preparing that home she will
+be willing enough to occupy.
+
+Meanwhile, see, for God’s sake, that no harm overtakes her. It’s worse
+than wicked to hear of the company she is in. Pay for a change of
+employment and do not let her know that you have done it. Your purse
+may help to achieve this. Pull the strings of it wide open, Harry, and
+put her in some decent way of life, in London for preference, and
+where you can watch over her. I have said from the first that the
+blood of the Bohemian runs strong in her veins. I doubt that you will
+ever tie her to any house or country--but the effort is worth the
+making, and you know that you have my good wishes in the matter.
+
+As for your prudence, your right to marry her or the wisdom of it, you
+know that I am a man who said be hanged to convention many years ago.
+What a sorry peep-show, what a play of shams and meanness and false
+pleasures is this social world we know, and into which we were born! I
+tell you that the hut on the mountain side--if there be good whisky
+therein and a decent golf course within riding distance--is all the
+palace I will ever require; while, as for my friend Harry, if the
+great high road and the café at the far end of it are not his goal,
+then say that I know nothing of men and less of the sex that does us
+all the mischief.
+
+You will set about earning your living, Harry, and put Mimi to some
+decent employment unbeknown to her that you have done it. This is the
+wisdom and the wish of your old friend,
+
+                                                               Paddy.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+ [In which we hear something of the Pageant at Lowestoft.]
+
+                                             The Grand Hotel, Cromer,
+                                                   August 14th, 1905.
+
+Dear Paddy,--The Pageant at Lowestoft came and went on Saturday
+last--the occasion of its first representation--and your faithful
+epistler has departed with it under circumstances which should be made
+known to you. These were as ridiculous as they were inevitable; but
+they have left my good cousin in a sad state of mind, and his little
+wife no less agitated.
+
+I count it nothing less than a tragedy, Paddy, that your friend, Henry
+Gastonard, who would no more make love to another man’s wife than he
+would steal the spoons from his table, should twice carry a firebrand
+into a peaceful house and there extinguish it not at all or but
+doubtfully. This, none the less, has been my undeserved fate. I
+quitted Lowestoft, leaving my cousin torn by jealousy concerning
+Martha and myself. His anger is as absurd as his suspicions; but of
+both you shall now hear.
+
+To begin with, let me say that I had some fine fun with him on Friday
+night upon my return from Yarmouth. The talk after dinner chanced to
+turn upon the ease or difficulty of making money; and, wishful to
+chaff Arthur, I began to speak of my own intentions. To have heard me
+you would have said that I had but to lift a finger to make ten
+thousand a year. I spoke of this scheme and of that, of the financiers
+I knew and the financiers who wished to know me. I mentioned young
+Gould casually, and threw in Harry Vanderbilt as though he were a
+paper-weight; to all of which Arthur listened entranced. His colour
+alternated between that of the departing rainbow and the
+newly-imported orange. There were moments when he was at a loss how to
+address me at all.
+
+“Did you say that you were venturing your own capital in these
+affairs?” he asked me. The simple fellow, a child would have seen
+through the question.
+
+“Not a penny of it,” said I, filling my glass with the Marsala, old in
+bottle, which he buys from a neighbouring grocer for one-and-three;
+“not a penny of it, Arthur. You must understand that I am bringing the
+new French motor-cab companies to London, and when the Syndicate has
+put down two hundred and fifty thousand, there should be some seven or
+eight for me as negotiatory vendor to begin with; and if they don’t
+pay me twelve or fifteen hundred a year afterwards to look after their
+interests, I’m a Dutchman. What I wanted to ask you was just this: Do
+you think I am wise to take up such a thing as a motor-cab, or would
+you advise me to stick to the flotation of the new submarine company,
+in which you know that I have interest? You have great sagacity and
+perception, and so I put the question to you frankly.”
+
+Upon my word, Paddy, the man’s face was a study when I said this, and
+it was worth anything to hear him humming and hawing in the very best
+pulpit manner before he answered me.
+
+“A clergyman knows little of financial affairs,” he remarked, coughing
+slightly to cover his difficulty. “Undoubtedly, a cab is not a very
+dignified conveyance, and er--hem, the future of the motor-car
+is--that is--may be--a dusty one. I should consider the whole question
+very closely, Henry. There are two sides to it, as to every question.”
+
+“And to every cab, Arthur. Well, I shall take your advice, for, of
+course, if I don’t do something very soon, you will be having my
+little lot and driving a four-in-hand to Hurlingham. I don’t mean to
+let you do that, Arthur. I shall stick to the money; though, if ever
+you want fifty for parochial uses, don’t forget to tell me.”
+
+He was visibly upset--he is not a man who can hide his feelings. I
+believe that if I had said the word, he would have consented to a
+compromise on the spot. But I am an obstinate fool, Paddy, and I feel
+that I would sooner sleep on the Embankment without a shirt to my back
+than part with one shilling to this disciple of the Law and the
+Profits who would spend it so ill.
+
+This badinage was a pretty prelude to what was to come. We were up
+early next morning, and the streets all a-blowing and a-growing before
+the fishing boats had come in. You do not know Lowestoft, Paddy, but
+you will please to understand that there is, beneath the northern
+cliff, a very pretty stretch of grass land, whereon golfers and others
+disport themselves. Toward this at eleven o’clock in the morning half
+the inhabitants and all the visitors wended their way; and here the
+great battle between the invading Danes and the inhospitable Britons
+was to take place, directed by my cousin Arthur, who carried a
+megaphone and took his station upon a watch-tower. As this is not a
+horsey locality, the most part of us went afoot, and a fine,
+straggling show of hire-purchase assassins we must have looked to any
+sane man who had happened upon us at hazard.
+
+Just imagine the narrow, fishy street of a fishy town packed from end
+to end with twentieth-century monks, romping British maidens, Druid
+priests, Danes, and Norsemen. Depict a fat grocer waddling along in a
+tin-pot helmet and a tunic down to his knees. Create for yourself the
+image of a substantial matron in a frock that looks like a--but you
+have seen the catalogues of the linen houses and will spare my
+blushes. Over all wave the flags and the banners. There are a few
+horsemen--six-and-six the first hour, six shillings afterwards--a
+great many battle-axes, pikes, and spiked maces. The fishermen, who
+stare as we pass by, laugh vulgarly. Some of the youths, who are to do
+the fighting, begin already and need the police to separate them. I
+observe that the girls are all in a hurry to be carried screaming to
+the hills and that they rehearse their parts upon any opportunity,
+even the most trifling.
+
+Such was the beginning of the Pageant at Lowestoft. Never, I suppose,
+was Arthur Warrington in better form; it was better than any Criterion
+farce to hear him shouting the stage directions from his watch-tower.
+Of course, had he been a clever man, he would have engaged some genius
+from the theatres to have helped him as to the stage management; but
+he is not a clever man, and chaos followed him to the battle-field.
+Oh, my dear Paddy, what a joy it was when that bellicose crowd heard
+him bawling: “Harps to the mound; all the lyres this side; ancient
+Britons, quick march; Danes ashore!” Could energy and a shrill voice
+have achieved success, Arthur assuredly would have been crowned there
+and then with a laurel; but, alas, what are energy and shrillness when
+your Druid priest is invariably in the refreshment tent and your Danes
+upset the boat which is bringing them ashore?
+
+You will remember that little Martha had persuaded me to play the part
+of one of these Scandinavian heroes, and a veritable sea-lion she said
+I looked when the costumier had finished with me. Though she herself
+stood for a British matron, I observed that her dress leaned toward
+the soubrette ideal, and that she proposed an early and satisfying
+adjournment to the tent wherein ices and other delicacies were vended.
+In this she was generally imitated. A more desultory battle, a wilder,
+more nonsensical puppet show, I have never seen upon any field of
+Europe. Danes playing leap-frog on the sands; Druids chasing each
+other, and the ladies--with sickle and artificial mistletoe--warriors
+flirting already when they should have been fighting; trumpeters
+passing their trumpets round for their neighbours to “have a blow;”
+monks talking politics and passing each other the morning papers; fat
+men asking “Where do we go?” stout ladies no less at a loss. My dear
+Paddy, the hills would have rung with your laughter and the sea given
+it back to you in roaring harmonies.
+
+I will confess that we got something like order when the battle was
+done, and that some of the Druidical rites were pretty and imposing. A
+dance of “early British maidens,” in the afternoon, left footprints on
+the sands of time; but the attempt of a monk to join in the business
+came near to ruining it. From this moment onward toward sunset the
+affair showed some signs of a degeneration which boded ill for the
+later hours. I found myself without part or place in a disorderly
+ensemble, and I suggested to Martha that she should be carried off
+incontinently to the sea; and that we would go for a little row until
+the multitude had recovered its senses. To this she consented very
+gracefully, and, a boat being quickly found--for many watermen had
+come to the place--I put off in it and soon left the madding crowd
+behind us.
+
+You must admit, Paddy, that there was little harm in this. We rowed in
+full view of the shore; as a Norseman it was my business thus to act
+in the presence of a British maiden. In a less romantic mood, I
+desired to have a little talk with pretty Martha--for none was
+possible at her house--and to hear exactly what she thought of my own
+affairs and of my cousin’s interest in them. She is a candid little
+body and responded immediately to my invitation. I found her no less
+merry than eloquent, and, to be honest, she was not born for a
+parson’s wife.
+
+“Arthur thinks he’ll have your fortune,” she said; “he’s buying
+motor-cars already with it.”
+
+“And you encourage him, Martha?”
+
+“Women always encourage men when they wish to be extravagant in a
+proper way. But I don’t believe you’ll part with the money--and, to be
+honest, I hope you won’t.”
+
+“Those are not Arthur’s sentiments.”
+
+“Would they be mine if they were? No man is the better for a woman
+agreeing with him. Of course, I want Arthur to do well in the world,
+but that’s no reason why he should do it with your fortune, Harry. As
+it is, your father left him five thousand pounds, and he ought to be
+satisfied.”
+
+“Especially in view of the simple life, and all that. Is not Arthur a
+bit of a Socialist, Martha?”
+
+“Yes, he believes in having all his neighbours’ things in common. He
+preached about it several times--they don’t like it in the country,
+and someone wrote to the Bishop.”
+
+“Did he suggest that his lordship should divide also?”
+
+“Now you’re silly, Harry. What I wanted to tell you was that you
+really must begin to do something in the world.”
+
+“I have blown a trumpet this very morning, and nearly cut off a
+Saxon’s head by accident. Is not that an achievement?”
+
+“It is the kind of achievement which sends Arthur buying
+motor-cars----”
+
+“To the glory of God, and the delight of the local repairer. Tell me,
+Martha, do you think I could earn any money, if I tried? Is it quite a
+mad hope?”
+
+“You could do so, Harry--you have brains enough. Arthur admits
+that--he read your article about East Anglia in the magazine, and is
+quite sure you have abilities.”
+
+“Strange term. I wonder how many men have gone to the devil because
+they had abilities?”
+
+“But you really have them, Harry. That little bust you sent me over
+from Paris a year ago was beautiful.”
+
+“Offer it to an art dealer in Piccadilly and see if he will give you
+five shillings for it. That kind of talent is the ruin of most of us.
+We touch the hem of Art’s garment, but she doesn’t stop to bless us.
+If I had been born a Portuguese Jew, and educated in the Ghetto, I
+might begin to speak of abilities. There are few left in the ordinary
+way.”
+
+“But, at least, you might work, Harry.”
+
+“What man who is in love works?”
+
+“You! In love! Now, do tell me. Is it true--you aren’t joking, Harry?”
+
+“I am not joking, Martha. Look at me and see. I am in love with a
+little French lady who is dancing on Yarmouth beach. It was she who
+kept me away from you last night.”
+
+“Now, that’s nonsense, and I shall not listen to you.”
+
+“I beg your pardon--you will listen as long as I go on talking. No
+woman shuts her ears to a man’s love story--she couldn’t if she
+tried.”
+
+“But--it--it would be disgraceful, Harry!”
+
+“Most of the pleasant things in life are disgraceful--from a narrow
+point of view. I think you used to dance before you married Arthur.”
+
+“Oh, I only waltzed--that’s not the kind of dancing I mean.”
+
+“Let me suggest to you, Martha, that you have not seen the Señorita
+Alphonsine. It would be fair to postpone a decision.”
+
+“Harry, I shall not believe it any more than I believed the story of
+the married woman for whom you fought a duel.”
+
+“That’s kind of you, Martha. A woman who does not believe a story
+about another woman is a treasure. She usually knows it is true
+because she has seen it with her own ears----”
+
+“Eyes, Harry----”
+
+“No, I mean ears. She sees it because she hears it.”
+
+“Are you going to marry this dancer?”
+
+“Ah, that’s what I don’t know. She also objected to Madame Lea, and
+her ideas about marriage are of the East, eastward. It is a subject
+you do not hear much about in a French atelier.”
+
+“Arthur says that he does not think any Frenchman can be saved--he
+read somewhere that even the married men hardly remember the names of
+their own wives--that is, in the society of which you speak.”
+
+“An embarrassing circumstance. He was once in Paris for three days, I
+think.”
+
+“Yes, we had cheap tickets, and saw the Louvre and the Madeleine----”
+
+“I wonder he did not bring an accent home--and pay duty on it at
+Charing Cross.”
+
+“But he is quite a French scholar, you know. He has read Lafontaine,
+and he says that French people can never be as religious as we are,
+because the Bible isn’t the same thing when it’s translated.”
+
+“A fine thought. But tell me, Martha, will you be my best woman if I
+marry Mimi?”
+
+“Mimi--is that her name?”
+
+“Yes, and a pretty name, too--don’t you think so?”
+
+“What is the best woman at a wedding, Harry?”
+
+“The woman who doesn’t run the bride down. Mimi hasn’t a friend in
+England and hasn’t a rag to her back. If she will marry me--and God
+alone knows whether she will or no--I want to see that she is all
+right and wants for nothing.”
+
+“I’ll do that with pleasure if Arthur will let me.”
+
+“Oh, Arthur be hanged. If this boat continues to carry us out to sea,
+as it is doing, we shall never see Arthur again.”
+
+“But, Harry--oh, my dear cousin, where are we going?”
+
+“That’s just what I want to know, Martha. Apparently we are on the way
+to the Hook of Holland. Do you know the Dutchmen? A charming people
+and some fine old cities.”
+
+I spoke at random, but, to tell you the truth, Paddy, I never was in
+such a stew in my life. There is a tremendous current running down
+this narrow strait, and we had been talking so heedlessly that it had
+carried us far out to sea before I had thought anything about a course
+at all. When the danger became apparent, we must have been a good mile
+from the shore, drifting apparently toward the southeast and carried
+almost as swiftly as a stick upon a river. And, as if this were not
+enough, what should happen but that my right scull, refusing to
+respond to my herculean efforts, broke off short at the thowl and left
+me with but a stump in my hand. Then, in truth, the lid was off the
+casket--then, indeed, I foresaw what was to come, both the peril and
+the folly of it.
+
+Poor little Martha! What a face she wore, and what a devil of a mess
+we seemed to be in! We had set off late in the afternoon, and it was
+now about the hour of sunset. I looked about me and saw a great watery
+plain glowing toward the west with a sheen of melting light; but, cold
+and grey as unburnished silver elsewhere. By here and there, a herring
+boat worked seaward beyond the banks; there were steamers upon the
+horizon, and one which had just passed us making northward, as it
+were, to Shields or the Humber. But, of help to be had for the crying,
+I saw positively none. As for the town of Lowestoft, it was now but a
+fringe of houses above a shimmering horizon. I could not even espy the
+masqueraders upon the beach, though there came to us from time to time
+a murmur of distant music, and, as it were, the ghost of a human
+voice. At last we passed away even from these--the sun sank; the
+waters began to beat about us a little ominously and the wind to utter
+a warning.
+
+Now, Paddy, you may imagine how little I liked this situation and how
+careful I was that my real opinion concerning it should be kept from
+the frightened little woman at the tiller. A sailor, I suppose, would
+have made light of the whole affair, arguing that the set of the tide
+would change anon and that the same boat which was now being carried
+out to sea would presently be carried home again. So plain a fact did
+not occur to me even while I had a pair of sculls in my hand; but with
+one scull overboard and no particular use for the other I fear it
+entered but little into my calculations. At the best I hoped that some
+passing ship might pick us up--at the worst that we might drift right
+across in safety and take an early boat to Harwich and our homes. But
+the latter was a wild dream, as you may suppose--and I had all my work
+to do to comfort little Martha and to applaud her bravery.
+
+“To begin with,” I put it to her, “we cannot go far in these parts and
+not spy out a herring-boat. The herring is a homely fish, Martha, and
+will naturally suggest Arthur and the fireside.”
+
+“He will never forgive me,” she said, “never--never--you don’t know
+him, Harry. I shall hear of this to my dying day.”
+
+“Of course you will. He will tell it proudly. An idiot of a man broke
+an oar out at sea and was only saved from a watery grave by the pluck
+and the resource of a brave woman--isn’t that what Arthur will say?”
+
+“Think of the scandal in the parish, all the tongues that will be
+wagging--think of that!”
+
+“It will be finer talk than the Pageant. Please write it down Martha,
+it may come in useful if I should perpetrate a book.”
+
+“Don’t, don’t,” she cried, “don’t say it, Harry. I am afraid, horribly
+afraid.”
+
+“Now, that you are not, or you would not confess it, Martha. It is I
+who am in a panic. I never was brave in the dark, and this particular
+kind of darkness is my abhorrence. I wonder if I flared a box of
+matches would it be any good, Martha. Do you think a fishing smack
+would understand it?”
+
+She made some evasive answer--the poor little body, I don’t wonder
+that the situation scared her. There we were out in the gathering
+darkness, not a light in sight save at distant Lowestoft, the wind
+blowing cold as a blast from the hills, the sun gone down in a cloud,
+and the sea rising with a mournful cry which would have shamed the
+spirits of desolation. What to do, how to act even an old sailor might
+have been puzzled to say. My primitive maritime knowledge, obtained
+upon the yachts at Trouville, suggested an attempt to keep the head of
+the boat towards the swelling breakers and her bows above the crests
+of the increasing waves. I sat by Martha’s side, and, employing the
+remaining scull as a paddle, tried to achieve so desirable an end. But
+not without many a weird evolution which came near to costing us our
+lives.
+
+To be candid, I was within an ace of drowning my cousin’s pretty wife,
+and that’s the whole truth of it. If you would give me ten thousand
+pounds upon the table, I would not again encounter those grim hours of
+helpless battling with monstrous waves and increasing winds blowing
+upon us out of the void of the night.
+
+Such a sense of loneliness and despair I have never experienced. We
+seemed to have left the world of men far behind us. Great hollows
+opened and threatened to engulf us. We mounted to crests and beheld a
+grey horizon capped by mountainous clouds with the moon struggling to
+break a golden way amid them. I knew then that long hours had passed;
+I doubted that we should ever see the shore again.
+
+And what does a woman do in moments like these. Well, if little Martha
+may speak for her sex, she cries a little, laughs for contrast,
+shivers when the cold can no longer be denied, and grows hot with hope
+upon the slightest word of encouragement. When I told her that I
+espied the light of a fishing-boat, she put both her arms about my
+neck and kissed me--when I had to admit that it was sailing away to
+the northward she just cried like a child who has met with
+disappointment. Nor was that poor creature, her husband, often out of
+her thoughts. A woman’s devotion to the man she has married may be
+diverted by his own follies, but the right kind of woman goes back
+upon it in the hour of danger. So with pretty Martha to-night. She
+wept not for herself but for the man’s sorrow--and there I could not
+comfort her at all.
+
+It would have been nearly four o’clock of the morning and full light
+when the boat they had sent out from Lowestoft found us at last. We
+both got wet to the skin going aboard her, and were wrapped up in
+blankets when we arrived at the Vicarage. Shall I say that Arthur
+received us with a tragic air? Nothing of the kind; he just blubbered
+like a schoolgirl and was down on his marrow-bones--for which I
+honoured him--there and then. His demand for explanations came
+afterwards. Those were tragic, indeed. “There must be a public account
+of this,” he said. I told him not to be a fool, and he retorted by
+asking me to leave his house.
+
+“I do not say,” he was good enough to remark, “that you can command
+the elements. Such was the power of the men of old. But at least you
+should know better than to leave the beach in full view of the people,
+with my wife as your companion, in so mad a folly. For that I shall
+never forgive you.”
+
+“Then you won’t continue to say the Lord’s prayer,” was my retort--and
+I left him to think upon it.
+
+But, naturally, I couldn’t stay here, Paddy--so where should I go but
+to Cromer, where “The Chimes” are playing. Be sure that the palms of
+these worthies were greased long ago, that the gentleman known as Jack
+Bendall has bought a new overcoat, that the lady at the piano is
+resplendent in a wonderful gown of satin, and that aromatic cigars of
+a Belgian brand are freely smoked by the company.
+
+Mimi is now a queen among them.
+
+But I am daring to hope that her sovereignty will be transferred
+elsewhere very soon--and that my daring plan will be rewarded by that
+success which you, my dear Paddy, would be the first to wish me. So in
+high hope find me,
+
+                                                         Your friend,
+                                                     Harry Gastonard.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XIX.
+
+ [In which we translate a letter from Henry Gastonard of the Maison du
+ bon Tabac, at Hampstead, to Mimi the Simpleton, at Felixstowe.]
+
+                                      Maison du bon Tabac, Hampstead,
+                                                     August 29, 1905.
+
+Chère Mimi,--Do you remember when Mademoiselle Marcelle taught us to
+sing--
+
+
+ “J’ai du bon tabac dans ma tabatière,
+ J’ai du bon tabac, tu n’en aurais pas?”
+
+
+There is a song _ma mie_, which others have been singing this
+afternoon in the house which their old comrade Mimi will not enter.
+_Ah, mes enfants!_ And what shall I say to them?
+
+Behold the builder, and ask if he be not punished enough. So much is
+admitted by those who have climbed upward to this height as you and I,
+_ma mie_, climbed upward in the old days, by the Villa Polichinelle,
+under the sails of La Galette, to the little house where Gabriel de
+Math had written immortality upon the windows and your old friend
+Desmond Barrymore used to sing you to sleep while he painted.
+
+They came here, Mimi, out of the Paris they love, to bring a message
+from the Butte to this savage land. But one is missing who should have
+welcomed them--_ah, mes enfants_.
+
+It is not Paris, this new house of the _bon Tabac_ at Hampstead, but
+you might rub your eyes sometimes and believe another story. Here, as
+upon our own beloved Butte, there stands the villa with the roses
+twined about it; here is the same tangle of a garden that served the
+Chevalier for his verses; here we sip the red wine and sing the songs
+which Jean Bataille taught us. One voice alone is missing. One who
+used to love us will not come to us--and the roses droop, and silence
+falls, and we know that we have not forgotten.
+
+Riches did not build this house, _ma mie_, nor will they support it.
+We are all poor as in the splendid days. If we open a little window
+and look down to the valley, we see the great city, and try to make
+believe that it is the Paris we love. Ah, what a cheat is that, and
+how willingly we consent to say, There is the dome of the Invalides,
+and there St. Jacques, and there the frowsy houses of the Mich’.
+Georges Oleander, the pitiful old mendicant, started the game and is
+the busiest to play it--but your old friend Desmond Barrymore makes
+one of the conspirators, and he has a little bust of you in clay upon
+the table as I write.
+
+Not Paris, but to those who will that it shall be so, a city of their
+desires. For what land is not a home to us when old friends are about
+us and there is good wine upon the table, and we may eat a
+Chateaubriand aux pommes and hear the Chevalier singing to us, and
+laugh at old Georges Oleander when he would beg the money for a new
+debauch to-morrow. Fifty francs may be the sum total of our riches--I
+doubt that it will be more. Each is poorer than his neighbour, and
+proud of the fact. When you come to us, _ma mie_, let your hands be
+full of gold, or we shall starve. Let Mimi be the Queen of our
+Treasury.
+
+You will find the house without difficulty, for your new friends will
+be aware of its situation when you tell them that it is in the Walk at
+Hampstead Heath, near London, and has the verses of Villon--though
+they will not have heard of him--upon the façade. Should you remember
+our loneliness, take an early train to London, enter a chariot, and
+demand to be driven here. As I say, your friends will direct you--and
+are you not rich, Mimi?
+
+This is the message of the Chevalier Honoré de Villefort: Let Mimi
+come to us.
+
+And this the command of Georges Oleander: Let Mimi come to us.
+
+And this the great hope upon the lips of Desmond Barrymore: Let Mimi
+come to us.
+
+And this the prayer of one whose house is empty when Mimi is not here.
+
+_Ah, mes enfants._
+
+                                                     Henry Gastonard.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XX.
+
+ [In which Mimi replies to Monsieur Henry.]
+
+                                          11, The Parade, Felixstowe,
+                                                           Wednesday.
+
+Ah, cher Monsieur Henry, if I knew how to answer you.
+
+Why should I go to dream a little while if I must awake to remember.
+_Ah, mille noms, faut-il être Parisienne._
+
+There must be roses in the heart if we would wear them on the cheek;
+but in my heart none, Monsieur Henry; for it has grown empty.
+
+I hear the Chevalier--but why would he call me to that great city of
+shadows? Does Monsieur Barrymore laugh at me when he would have me
+believe that he is happy in this England? Shall I think well of
+Monsieur Oleander because he also is deceived a little while? Here I
+look all day across the sea where they tell me that France is. I am a
+child, but they call me a woman. _Ah, mes enfants!_ What pages I have
+turned in this great book of sorrow that none may see my tears fall
+upon them.
+
+A little while and the sun will shine, and then there is the great
+cold road again and the sad-faced people, and we go away, oh, so far
+away towards the dark and the night; and there is no light in the sky
+behind us to tell us where the city is; we hear no laughter anywhere;
+but the end of the world is beyond, and we voyage with shut lips
+toward it.
+
+I remember such a journey as this; it was long ago when I was so
+little, that you, Monsieur Henry, could have put me in your great big
+pocket. An old woman led me by the hand away from a great warm house
+down to the water and the ships. I remember that it was twilight and
+then night, and that I saw my home behind me as a star one sees low
+down in the heavens. And then we came to a hut in the wood, and there
+were ugly men, and I could not sleep, and when it was day all that I
+had known went from my mind, and I remembered nothing but the lonely
+road, and the strange faces, and the harsh words I heard. You know how
+far I have journeyed since those days. Ah, what palaces we have
+visited together, you and I, Monsieur Henry--and how often I have lost
+you! Can you wonder that I would rest--even I?
+
+I dance still with these English friends, and they are very kind to
+me. The people here say that my dancing is wicked; but there are many
+clergymen, and they love to say “shockink.” I live in a little room
+where I can watch the sea, and I go out every morning, long before the
+people are up, to float on the waves, and look for the ship which will
+carry me back to France. But there is no mermaid here, no fairy swims
+with me; I cannot find the silver shell, and I return to my little
+house to say it will be never, that I shall see France no more, that
+all the world has deserted me.
+
+Shall I make you sad, Monsieur Henry, to tell you all these things? If
+I do, the Chevalier will make you laugh, and that will be the
+recompense. Oh, he is droll, the Chevalier. Do you remember when he
+loved Madame la Comtesse de Brianville--and would have borrowed twenty
+francs to marry her? _Ah, mes enfants_--but those were days!
+
+And Monsieur Georges. Yes, I would like to see him again, and that
+great Monsieur Barrymore who used to sit me on his knee before he
+painted my picture.
+
+And they are all in your Maison du bon Tabac, and there is Paris below
+the windows, the Paris you love to dream of, and you sing the songs
+that Jean de Bataille made. _Ah, mes enfants_--if I were there!--Your
+friend,
+
+                                                                Mimi.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXI.
+
+ [Being a telegram from Henry Gastonard to his friend Paddy O’Connell
+ of Glendalough.]
+
+Have news of the gravest importance. Please come to London at once to
+the Maison du bon Tabac, at Hampstead. I count upon you.--Harry
+Gastonard.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXII.
+
+ [Being the reply from Paddy O’Connell to Henry Gastonard’s telegram.]
+
+Impossible to leave before the next train--am catching it.--Paddy.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+ [Paddy O’Connell shares the news with his sister Clara.]
+
+                                4, The Walk, Hampstead, London, N.W.,
+                                                 September 5th, 1905.
+
+My dear Clara,--’Twas a rough crossing I had, and it found me by no
+means unwilling to step from the sea to the land. But I’d be no good
+Irishman if I complained of a little rough water between me and the
+Sassenach; and so here I am and, God be good to me, in the midst of as
+wild a company of men as ever drank wine out of a flower vase or
+cooked their beef on a spirit stove. And, faith, they do drink and eat
+from the morning until the night, and, after that, from night to the
+morning again--as the garden bears witness, for I swear ’tis full
+already of the bottles, and beginning to be heaped up at that.
+
+There was a man at Euston who clapped a false bag over my valise and
+stepped into a cab with it; but I saw him just in time, and jumped
+into the cab with him. He appeared by no means pleased at this; and
+when the driver asked “Where to?” “Why,” says I, “to Scotland Yard.”
+You should have seen the fellow alight, leaving me in possession of a
+machine to steal bags which might well be a fortune to me.
+
+But, Clara, I am to tell you of my visit to Hampstead, where Harry
+is--and not of any bags at all--which I now proceed to do as well as
+these hilarious folks will let me, and as coherently as the madness of
+it makes possible. You should know that I found Harry in a little
+house on the top of a hill by London, at a place they call Hampstead;
+a great, big, bare heath of a wilderness where the folks go to be
+happy on Sundays, and which is large enough for the drunken ones to
+fall down and sleep convenient. This is the famous Hampstead Heath,
+wherefrom, they tell me, you can see the dome of St. Paul’s and
+Westminster Abbey, though little of one or the other did I see, but
+only a great big hole full of smoke and the roofs of railway stations,
+and the factory chimneys sticking up above it.
+
+The house itself is a bit of a place not much bigger than a cabin on a
+bog. Some man, who has a wonderful taste for the arts, painted it the
+colour of the great Atlantic Ocean, and there are creepers all over
+the face of it, and some poor little roses that are pining for the
+country but will get no chance of air yet awhile. As for the interior
+of the place, well, there we have Harry’s wit at work, for the rascal
+has made it as like his little house in Paris as money and pains could
+do; and, as if this were not enough, he has invited over a troop of
+the rogues that he used to know, and filled them with good red wine
+until there isn’t a man among them who could tell you whether he’s
+himself or his neighbour. But here I get ahead of the story, and that,
+my dear Clara, will never do.
+
+I arrived at the house about six o’clock of the evening. No man could
+have mistaken the place, for a great tri-colored flag was flying out
+of the bedroom window, and a crowd stood before the windows to hear
+the Chevalier Villefort singing the French song which has the fine
+classic chorus--“Fifine, elle est doloreuse.” When I knocked at the
+door, loud enough to shake the door off its hinges, such a shout went
+up as should have brought the fire engines to the street. And what a
+rushing to the door, what cries of “Entrez--herein--kum een”--what
+hands thrust out to drag me along--what a tossing up of my bag--God
+help the whisky--what a pandemonium! A rat fallen among terriers would
+not have been so shaken to the very roots as your poor Paddy. Faith, I
+think that about forty of them were sitting on my chest at a time,
+though it proved afterwards that there were but five in the house,
+including the little witch that Greuze should have painted, and she
+was as wild as any of them, and as ready for the frolic.
+
+Well, they pulled me into a room that was conveniently furnished with
+a piano that had but two or three notes to it, and chairs that had no
+proper backs to them; and, seeing that I was hungry and famished after
+the journey, they set a bottle of curaçoa and a yard of bread before
+me and bade me fall to.
+
+The place itself was so thick with smoke that I was hard put to it to
+say whether I was looking out of the front of my head or the back; and
+I was in no way surprised to hear that they had made a night and a day
+of it, and proposed to double the term. As for the men, their clothes
+would have made the fortune of a circus. Harry himself wore a suit of
+travelling checks loud enough to knock down a nigger minstrel. The
+long-whiskered beggar-man, Georges Oleander, had an old golfer’s red
+coat to his back and a sea-green waistcoat for its own brother; the
+lady-killer Villefort, a real Frenchman as you see them in Paris and a
+gentleman as well, he wore a frock-coat and a rose like a cabbage in
+his buttonhole; while as for the little witch Mimi, she was dressed in
+a frock down to her knees and a pair of crimson stockings bright
+enough to light the candles. What it all meant--the house, the people,
+the noise--your Paddy knew no more than the people in the street. What
+was worse, no man among them seemed able to tell him.
+
+“Finish your breakfast first,” says Harry--it was then about half-past
+six o’clock of the afternoon--“and then we can lay the cloth for
+dinner. I’ve ordered it from the confectioner’s, and we’re going to
+have a real good time. Upon my word, Paddy, you were an old brick to
+come--whatever should we have done without you?”
+
+“Why?” says I, wondering still more, “and what do you propose to do
+with me?”
+
+“Why, to make you sing ‘Finnigan’s Wake’ to begin with, and then the
+next best song you can remember. Come, Paddy, no heel-taps--you must
+be thirsty, and I wish we had something else but curaçoa. They’ve
+drunk all the wine and I’ve sent for some more.”
+
+“From what I perceive,” says I, “they have already drunk what you’ve
+sent for. Is it a wake or a wedding, Harry? You didn’t send for me all
+the way from Ireland to join in a smoking-concert. I’ll not believe it
+at all.”
+
+He said “Hush,” and, presently, when the others were fallen to their
+games again, he took me out into the bit of a garden, where there was
+a fountain and a satyr--though the gentleman had a clay pipe in his
+mouth instead of a flute, and someone had sketched the picture of a
+broken bottle just where he should have worn his tail. Here we had a
+moment’s privacy, and here I began to get at the truth of it.
+
+“Harry,” asks I, “will ye answer me a plain question--what are all
+these tipsy gentlemen doing here, and why have you brought that little
+lady among them?”
+
+Well, he took me by the arm and began to walk me up and down the
+narrow path.
+
+“They’re not tipsy,” says he, “they’re just glad, Paddy. It’s a long
+story, my boy, and a good one. But I’ll have to tell it you in two
+minutes.”
+
+“Ay,” says I, “and it’s the story of the child, no doubt.”
+
+He nodded his head. He’s a fine handsome lad, with a wicked wisp of
+brown curls over his handsome forehead, and two clear blue eyes which
+should go deep into any woman’s heart. And he never looked handsomer
+than he did this night.
+
+“Her story, of course, Paddy. I have won her by a trick, my boy. Don’t
+say now that I was wrong to go to my cousin’s house, for it was little
+Martha who put the first notion of it into my head.”
+
+“Did the parson call you out?”
+
+“No, he called me in lest the neighbours should see.”
+
+“Did he complain of his ship coming home--the poor devil of a man?”
+
+“It was a little awkward, certainly--but it saved me, Paddy. I just
+ran over to Cromer to see Mimi, and then came on to London to fit up
+this house. What will appeal to her, said I, will be a new Maison du
+bon Tabac.”
+
+“You’ve plenty of it here. ’Twould take a telescope to see across the
+room.”
+
+He was a little cross with me for interrupting him, and, in faith, I
+was as curious to hear his story as he to tell it. So I just held my
+tongue and let him run on freely.
+
+“I determined if I could,” he said, “to find Mimi a little house in
+London, which would speak to her of the old days in Paris and lead her
+to forget that she is among strangers in a strange country. So I
+fitted up this place. You see what kind of a place it is, Paddy--just
+a replica of the old villa on the Butte, with the very furniture that
+we used to laugh at there. Then I sent for my friends, and the good
+fellows came at once. How could they keep away?”
+
+“You paid their fares, Harry?”
+
+“Yes, and old Georges had an accident with his at the Cabaret of the
+Tête Noire--so I had to send it twice. But they came, Paddy, and we
+began to live the old life just as we lived it at Montmartre--and then
+we wrote to Mimi; we all wrote to her, and we sat down and waited for
+her. My God! if you had known what those days of waiting meant to me.”
+
+He was deeply moved, and my heart went out to him. I have spoken to
+you before of his great love for this child--and, to be sure, it is an
+honest man’s devotion, full of fine, chivalrous thoughts and so
+utterly unselfish that it must bring him to abject poverty by and by.
+This, however, was not the time to speak of it.
+
+“But she came to you, Harry?” said I; “she came to you, man?”
+
+“God be thanked, she did, Paddy. It was last night--these fellows had
+all gone off to dine in Soho at a French café no Christian man has
+ever heard of. I was alone in the house--all my spirit had gone, for
+Mimi’s letter seemed to say that she would not come. All the prophets
+of evil whispered in my ears and promised me misfortunes while I
+waited. I lived half a lifetime of poverty, distress, and
+disappointment--alone in the dark of the garden looking down upon the
+lights of London, and asking if they hid Mimi from my sight. You know
+what moods like these can be--how we seem robbed of every shred of
+hope, how we say that good fortune will never visit us again--wish
+almost that our lives were lived. That was my case for two long
+hours--oh, my dear Paddy, may I never live such hours again.”
+
+“And then,” says I, “then, my dear Harry, you were lifted up to heaven
+in a jiffy. Elijah didn’t beat you at the flying.”
+
+He laughed like a boy at this, while he squeezed my arm as though he
+would press all the human kindness out of me and add it to his own
+store. Trust a man in love to be a miser with his sympathies.
+
+“As true as gold, Paddy,” says he, “she came at nine o’clock, just
+when I had put pistols in the balance with laudanum, and was watching
+the scale. I can hear the wheels rolling on the gravel now--ah, the
+roll of the wheels that carry your mistress to you, is there any
+sweeter music in life?”
+
+“Did she come alone, Harry?”
+
+“The man they call Jack Bendall brought her. I gave him a ten-pound
+note for himself and a fiver each for the others of the company. Of
+course, I didn’t guess at first that Mimi was in the cab, and my heart
+started to beat like a fire-pump. She was ill, I said, gone back to
+France perhaps--or even dead. Then, Paddy, I heard her voice! Think of
+that, old boy, I heard her voice!”
+
+“’Twas what was said in the Dublin Courts last week, when Mary
+Wentworth went for a divorce from old Mike. She heard a voice in the
+parlour--a female voice----”
+
+“Oh, be serious, Paddy, be serious.”
+
+“The very words the Judge used. Do you mean to marry her now you’ve
+got her here, Harry?”
+
+“Am I a rogue, Paddy? I’d have married her this morning if the priest
+would have done it.”
+
+“The priest--what priest?”
+
+“Why, the one from the little French church. Old Georges went to fetch
+him, but we’d had so much wine that Georges couldn’t explain himself,
+and the priest thought there was someone sick, and came immediately.
+When he got there, it was just about half-past five in the morning.
+The room was full of bottles and tobacco-smoke, and Villefort was
+playing ‘All the little sheep and lambs,’ and singing it as well. When
+the good father came in and saw Mimi fast asleep in an armchair and
+the rest of us looking as though we had been boiled in old Bordeaux,
+he just bolted, Paddy.”
+
+“Ah,” says I, “it’s astonishing how the ecclesiastical mind revolts at
+originality. Ye couldn’t call him back, Harry?”
+
+“No, I didn’t try. We’re to have a special license now and to be
+married in the morning. Mimi’s sent for her clothes, and I’ve got a
+frock-coat coming over.”
+
+“Will you live in this place when it’s done?”
+
+“Ah, that’s what I don’t know. You see, I had to catch her by a trick,
+but I won’t keep her that way, for we have our livings to get. That’s
+a task I must set about at once.”
+
+“You were for setting about it two years ago. I remember you bought a
+quire of paper and two nibs, and were for writing the History of the
+Palais Royal. You got as far as a sketch of Cardinal Richelieu dining
+at the Ritz Hotel, didn’t you?”
+
+“Yes, Paddy, but it’s a great scheme, and I shall finish it some day.”
+
+“Some day is the Bohemian’s yesterday. He’s always going to do great
+things yesterday. Harry, my boy, you’re taking the devil’s own risk;
+there are few men who would countenance you, I suppose.”
+
+“But you, you, Paddy, you don’t forbid it?”
+
+“I’ve wished it from the start. It may be the making of you--if it
+isn’t the ruin. I’d sooner see you married to this little girl than
+dangling at a married woman’s apron-strings as you were in Paris.
+Riches don’t go for much if they can’t do better than that for you,
+Harry.”
+
+“Oh, but you’re talking of things that have been. I don’t want to hear
+about them--heaven knows, there are sad moments enough.”
+
+“Why sad moments?”
+
+“I cannot tell you. It’s just obstinacy. Sometimes I tell myself that
+even if I marry Mimi, I shall not keep her with me. I’m afraid of her
+own past, afraid of my own future. Consider what gipsy lives we have
+led. How are we to go on living them, how am I to hope that she will
+settle down to the hum-drum things of a suburban existence? And, of
+course, I dare not take her back to Paris; you know how foolish that
+would be.”
+
+“Put the thought out of your head. You would be a madman to play with
+it. As for keeping her--well, a man who cannot keep a woman who loves
+him isn’t worth his salt. I’ll not hear it. You have no right to be
+talking like this--not to-night anyway. Begin to speak of dark things
+when the sun is setting on your happiness. You can keep it above the
+horizon as Joshua did if you set out to slaughter the heathen who are
+the masters of your idleness. Work, Harry--that’s the best friend in a
+man’s home.”
+
+He did not answer me; in truth, he had no chance. The dinner made its
+appearance, and we all sat down to it--such a merry company that must
+have recalled all the days of the old Kit Kat Club, and of the wild
+dogs that frequented the same. For you must know, Clara, that this
+Hampstead place has seen the poets Keats and Leigh Hunt, who was
+another writing man, and Charles Dickens, to say nothing of the
+prize-fighters who had their training quarters in these parts, as
+Harry told me over the dinner-table; and I’ll warrant there has been
+many such a carouse as we held this night, and with reasons not half
+so good. Meat and drink, song and dance--the men breaking up the
+chairs and tables; all sorts of music, wine enough to float a man of
+war, French ways and manners of it--ay, a night and a morning, too,
+for the bride fell fast asleep in the arm-chair just when the sun came
+up, and there were three of us on the benches in the garden when they
+cried the milk in the streets. Nor will I write this to our shame. We
+were children of the highway for the nonce. God knows, there is too
+much of brick and mortar in the world.
+
+You may ask me, Clara, how I, a decent man in my own country, and
+respected in County Wicklow--as any clergyman who plays golf will bear
+witness--how I can encourage this tipsy life or give moral support to
+my old friend, Henry Gastonard, when he is the victim of it. I’ll tell
+you in a word. He will go to the devil if he does not marry this
+little witch, and the way he has set out to marry her is the only one
+by which his journey’s end can be reached.
+
+Think of the child’s life--she who danced in the booths about Paris,
+she who has been a fortune hunter--God help her!--almost since she was
+old enough to lisp any words at all. Would such a pretty waif and
+stray go to a man who had red plush breeches about him and solid
+silver on his table? Would she enter a house of double doors with a
+marble staircase beyond? Never, I’ll swear, to her life’s end. He has
+won her through her heart, and worthily won her too.
+
+They were married this morning at ten o’clock at the French Consulate,
+and afterwards by the man that keeps the Registry. The rest of us were
+half asleep, but we kept it up to the end, and when we left them at
+ten o’clock of the night and they were alone together in the house, we
+stood by the window a moment to watch him kiss her very tenderly
+before we went down the hill to the pit where London lies. She is now
+his wife--God bless her pretty face!--though what their future is to
+be, whether a fair way in a garden of roses or all the sorrow of the
+children of Alsatia is more than any man may dare to say--let alone
+your affectionate brother,
+
+                                                               Paddy.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+ [In which Henry Gastonard keeps his promise to Martha Warrington.]
+
+                                        4, The Walk, Hampstead, N.W.,
+                                                September 21st, 1905.
+
+Dear Martha,--I have owed you a letter for a long time, but really, my
+dear cousin, a man whose honeymoon is but a fortnight old has little
+time to think of the sun--and his days are brief enough.
+
+I was sorry to hear that Arthur considers my marriage a “mere scramble
+on to the banks after a wild plunge into the vortex of sin.” I hope he
+was not eating new bread and butter when he uttered this masterpiece.
+Marriage, I remember, was not made much of by St. Paul, and Arthur
+used to be a Pauline until he met you. What he is now I have not yet
+discovered. You, who have broken the box of sweet spices at his feet,
+are right to complain of the holes in his socks--but as a married man
+I have no sympathy with you.
+
+This is dreadful news, too, about your hair. These new dyes are
+troublesome tenants, and do not take our hair upon a repairing lease.
+It really was very noble of you to dye it so bright a red for the sake
+of the Pageant. And now, you say that the dye won’t come out, and that
+you must return to Beldon still wearing the brand of Boadicea. Cheer
+up, Martha. Have not some of the noblest women in history--chief
+amongst them our Elizabeth of blessed memory--dressed auburn locks for
+posterity and gloried in their possessions? For my part, had I known
+of the fact when writing my skit, “The People of the Pageant,” I would
+have mentioned it to your lasting honour. The little book appears to
+be getting about--I had no idea that such a trifle could interest so
+many.
+
+But concerning more serious things. I am living, as you wished me to
+live, in a box of a cottage upon Hampstead Heath. The place is pretty
+enough, and now that we are married I am putting some comfort into it.
+This is only to be done secretly and by stealth. Chairs, which were
+not there yesternight, are discovered at breakfast time. A new piano
+dropped from the heavens, so to speak, and has notes that play. I have
+bought a splendid brass bed, and the men rigged it up while Mimi was
+out shopping. She suspects me, but says little. I have not told her in
+the very word that I am poor; but I have led her to that belief, and
+her devotion is the consequence.
+
+Would it be foolish to tell you, Martha, that I am not wholly happy in
+spite of all this? The vaguest fears afflict me. I know not from day
+to day what evil is to overtake me, and yet I am conscious of evil.
+Perchance it is but the aftermath of golden days, lived in a sunshine
+I had never hoped to see. Perhaps it is but a lover’s humour--I cannot
+say, and yet it is as real as any thought that ever dwelt with me.
+
+You must know that old Paddy O’Connell, the wild Irishman with the
+thunderous voice and the jet black locks and the magnificent figure,
+remains, good friend that he is, in London to “see me through it,”
+whatever that may mean. He is lodged at the Jack Straw Castle Inn, on
+the very summit of the Heath here, and he is with us the best part of
+the day, and often the best part of the night. As Mimi refuses
+(because of my poverty) to engage a servant, and is at once
+housekeeper, cook and general servant to the establishment, I welcome
+Paddy as valet in ordinary, and do not refuse him. At the brushing of
+a coat or the carrying of a coal-hod he is immense; while his choice
+of wines and cigars is not to be questioned. For the rest, he has a
+new scheme of money-making ready for me every day. His last was as
+wild as his first--it would do cousin Arthur good to hear of it.
+
+Paddy thought he had discovered a new furnace and retort for the
+making of gas. He wished to put a thousand into the thing and for me
+to work it in his interest. The invention, it appears, was run by a
+sharp American, who had the machine set up in a mews near
+Baker-street, and invited us there to witness his experiments. I went
+by appointment, and, of course, Paddy accompanied me. Apparently, the
+inventor made gas out of anything you like. He had a small furnace and
+a retort with a meter attached. I don’t know much about the business,
+but I have a pair of eyes in my head, and I used them carefully while
+we witnessed the first experiments. Certainly they were wonderful. The
+inventor lighted a fire with a little bundle of sticks and then put
+all sorts of things into the furnace--bits of paper, bits of cloth,
+rubbish from dust-bins; and all the time the meter showed that gas was
+being made. He declared to us on his word of honour that he could make
+gas “out of dead cats” if he chose. I went away puzzled, but Paddy was
+enchanted.
+
+“See here,” says he, “is it a fortune to ye or is it not?”
+
+“My dear Paddy,” said I, “fortunes do not come quite so kindly--I want
+to think a bit.”
+
+“Think be hanged!” says he, “’tis thinking ye have been for five years
+or more. Will ye starve or make gas?”
+
+“Gas,” said I, “does not generally starve, Paddy. There’s a lot of it
+about in London.”
+
+“To the devil with it, Harry. Will ye take the man’s offer or leave
+it?”
+
+“I’ll tell you to-morrow, Paddy, when we have seen him again.”
+
+He was very angry at this, and would not come to lunch with me. Of
+course, I told Mimi all about it, and asked her opinion. She knows
+less about gas than I do; but she has a wonderful little head of her
+own, and her wisdom often puts me to shame.
+
+“People cannot make gas out of rubbish, Harry. I am sure of it. Did
+you light the fire yourself, or did he?”
+
+“Oh, he did, Mimi.”
+
+“Very well; take some wood to-morrow and offer to light it for him.”
+
+I told her that I would do so, and we changed the subject with a
+laugh. She had made a wonderful omelet, but had put sugar instead of
+salt into it, and I had to confess that a savoury omelet made with
+sugar was a delicacy to captivate the heart of Brillat Savarin. The
+afternoon we spent in the lanes on our bicycles, and at night a
+mollified Paddy came to dine with us and made no reference to the gas,
+though I observed that he took but a moderate quantity of that
+commodity with his whisky.
+
+Ten o’clock had been the hour fixed for our second visit to
+Baker-street, and we were there, as the Americans say, on time. I
+don’t know whether the inventor took the matter as already settled,
+but he wore a fine frock-coat and had a pretty white rose in his
+buttonhole. The usual preliminaries being over, he told me that he
+proposed to make gas out of a box of child’s bricks, an old volume of
+illustrated newspapers, and a woman’s discarded shawl. I listened
+patiently, and did not interfere until the moment he was about to
+light the fire; when I stepped forward and produced the bundle of
+sticks with which Mimi had provided me.
+
+“Look here,” said I, “if you expect me to put any money into this, I
+must light the fire to-day.”
+
+Well, Martha, if a thunderbolt had hit him the man could not have
+looked more surprised. And yet his _sang-froid_ did not desert him; he
+pretended to acquiesce with the best of good grace.
+
+“It is immaterial to me,” he said; “you will find the furnace a little
+damp--so many queer things get into it. By all means try, and I will
+get a pair of bellows to help you.”
+
+He was out of the room in a jiffy, and we heard him running down the
+stairs. For my part I made no attempt whatever to light his fire.
+
+“Paddy,” said I, “he will return with those bellows on the kalends of
+March. I’ll give you fifty pounds if he comes back to-day.”
+
+Paddy would not hear of it.
+
+“What!” cried he, “d’ye mean to say we have met with a swindler?”
+
+“Undoubtedly, and a very impudent one.”
+
+“I’ll never believe it. Ye do the man an injustice; ’tis a lie, I
+say!”
+
+“Very well, Paddy; send out for some lunch and the morning newspapers.
+We can soon prove it one way or the other.”
+
+Poor man, he was in a fearful state, for there is no more trusting
+soul in all Ireland to-day than Paddy O’Connell. I need not tell you,
+Martha, that the man never came back. The secret of his furnace was
+the secret of the bundle of sticks with which he lighted his fire.
+These were chemically prepared, and generated the gas which caused the
+meter to register.
+
+And so, alas, poor Paddy! There was no more sorrowful man in Hampstead
+than my good friend that night. If he made no actual reference to the
+evanescent subject of gas, I observed that he took plain water with
+his whisky and uttered certain pious aphorisms concerning the
+wickedness of this world in general and of its merchants in
+particular. Forty-eight hours afterwards he had another scheme
+prepared. I am to set up in London as an art connoisseur--to advise
+the dealers concerning old pictures and the public concerning new
+ones. This, he says, will bring me a decent income, at any rate, and
+assure me the friendship of millionaires.
+
+“And who knows,” he asks me triumphantly, “that one of ’em won’t take
+a fancy to you and make you a partner in his affairs? ’Tis a thing
+that has happened, and not so wonderful. Ye have Mimi to keep, and ye
+may have the children. Will ye be sitting idle while she starves,
+Harry? Shame on ye for the thought.”
+
+To which I can make no response, Martha. Idleness has caught me in its
+iron grip, and I am spellbound. The sunny days pass so swiftly. There
+is a crown of tousled hair upon my pillow when I wake; I see the one
+face in all the world that should be there when I go to my sleep at
+night. Mimi herself appears to live in a kind of wonderland. Sometimes
+she dreams through long spells of silence; there are other hours when
+the old life stirs in her blood and all the riot and merriment of the
+Butte must claim her. Again and again I have spoken to her of her
+childhood, but can awaken no new memories. A wood, and a lonely road,
+and a woman’s terrible face--such are her impressions. To speak of
+them is to recall those phantoms of fear which have haunted me from
+the beginning and are not unknown to her. I repeat that they may be
+the creations of happiness itself, for what is left for me to desire
+but this possession of all that I have sought--this peace which
+passeth understanding?
+
+Convey, I beg of you, to cousin Arthur such impressions of my
+affection as will suit his mood. His sermon on the “Damnable Errors of
+Modernism” I should have thought a little advanced for the simple
+fisherfolk at Lowestoft. As for the holiday-makers, they must be hard
+put to it sometimes to discover something new--so I suppose they went
+in. The main thing is, did you play to capacity; I mean, in ordinary
+parlance, had you a good collection?
+
+It would be cruel to hear that the damnable heresies aforesaid were
+assessed by Lowestoft at a sum of seven-and-six sterling--the amount
+in the plate upon the last occasion when it was put before--Your
+affectionate Cousin,
+
+                                                               Harry.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXV.
+
+ [Containing certain instructions to M. Jules Farman, ex-agent of
+ police at 4 (bis), Rue du Quatre Septembre, Paris.]
+
+                                4, The Walk, Hampstead, London, N.W.,
+                                                September 28th, 1905.
+
+Dear Monsieur Farman,--The inquiries set up for me by the French
+Consul, of which I spoke to you in a recent letter, appear to have
+been without fruit. I am, therefore, craving your kind services once
+more in my interest and begging your diligence.
+
+It is known to you that I have married Mademoiselle Mimi, who cost us
+so pretty an adventure at Raincy together; but the circumstance of my
+marriage and my wife’s own solicitude make it more necessary than ever
+that I should be put in possession of all the facts which inquiry and
+patience may disclose concerning her birth and parentage. I know no
+one in Paris to whom I would as soon commit my interests as to you,
+and I hereby beg of you to accept the service and to spare no expense
+to further it. From what the Consul has been so good as to tell me,
+your inquiries will be best pursued in the neighbourhood of Orleans,
+and especially at the house of the old woman Marie, if she be still
+living and capable of answering any questions at all.
+
+There is another circumstance--so shadowy that I mention it with
+hesitation, but so full of remote possibility that I have no right to
+withhold it. For some days now, I have had the idea that this little
+house of mine in London is being watched. Possibly my fears are
+altogether groundless. We have led an eccentric life in this place and
+have carried here some of the habits and practices with which Paris
+made us familiar. These may have provoked the curiosity of the
+neighbours or of others who have heard of them by rumour. Be that as
+it may, my wife has been much alarmed upon more than one occasion, and
+I am not without my fears that we are upon the threshold of a greater
+mystery than any which has yet attended her adventurous life.
+
+I may add that there is just one man in Paris who, in my wife’s
+judgment, should have been sought out by us before but has escaped our
+observation and eluded our reckoning. He is a burly ruffian who
+frequents the old Café of the Assassins, and he is often to be found
+there nowadays. They know him by the name of Jean-le-Mont, a title by
+which you will readily discover him.
+
+I commend this man to your notice as one who might be able to help you.
+Meanwhile, accept the assurance of my profound consideration.--And
+permit me to remain,
+
+                                               Yours very faithfully,
+                                                     Henry Gastonard.
+
+I enclose a draft for a hundred pounds. You are to draw upon me
+immediately for any further sums you may require.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+ [Madame Mimi writes a letter to Paddy O’Connell.]
+
+                                       The Hotel Metropole, Brighton,
+                                                              Sunday.
+
+Dear Great Big Monsieur Paddy,--I cannot very much write the English
+as now, but I shall have to say to you what is not proper. Why do you
+tell me the untrue things about my husband--that he is the poor man
+and no more shall have any of the moneys? Is it, Monsieur Paddy,
+because the men always think they are good when they tell the untruth
+to the lady? But I know, and I am angry, very angry with you. You
+shall never tell me untrue things again--_jamais de ma vie_.
+
+I would tell you that we have gone away from the Hampstead to the
+border of the sea. If Harry had not the moneys he could not have led
+me here in the big motor-car--so big, Monsieur Paddy, that we could
+have put you in it as well. And we have come to the hotel, and I am so
+frightened of the people and I think I shall run away. But Harry says
+no--and I remain, for I could not be, oh, not for a little single
+hour, away from the place where _mon mari_ dwells. So I stay, but am
+very sad--dear friend, if you would understand how sad I am!
+
+Why do the men come to my house and watch me? I do not say to my
+husband half the things I know, for that shall make him afraid also.
+Is it, Monsieur Paddy, that someone hates me for being his wife? Shall
+you think that Madame Lea sends the men? She is not the woman who may
+forget him--how well I remember it, and how often I tell it by myself
+when no one is in the apartment with me. She will not forget--that
+clever, wicked Madame Lea who love all the men for moneys but not any
+at all for the love.
+
+It was because I have been afraid that my husband brought me to the
+border of the sea. We have put on all our clothes and are very
+beautiful. I must not sing as I walk to and fro, and if the music
+makes me want to dance I must hold myself down upon my _banc_. All the
+afternoons the _monde_ goes up and down in a carriage--such _gros
+monsieurs_ with fur round their necks, and the English lady who is so
+sad and makes her shoulders bare before she sits down to dinner.
+
+I like the sun and I like the sea--the great big wild sea, where
+across so far is my beloved France. I am very happy with my husband,
+but, oh, so much afraid, that I wake in the night and lay my head upon
+his breast and cry myself because he is there and I am his wife. Ah,
+Monsieur Paddy, how unhappy to be no one--never to have known that you
+were a little child and that you had a home. I am that, and I am
+ashamed because it has been so--that I am not as the others, and that
+my husband shall never be proud of me because of what I was when I
+left my father’s house.
+
+Will you not write to me, my dear Monsieur Paddy, and tell me how
+wrong I am? Do not refuse Mimi the Simpleton. She is very simple
+still, dear Monsieur Paddy, and she have no right to believe that her
+happiness is not the dream which will pass away.
+
+Why did you go from us to your desert country? Why did you leave us?
+It was not kind, Monsieur--and you have been our friend. All the
+others is gone away--the Chevalier, the wicked Monsieur Oleander, the
+kind Monsieur Barrymore. They have taken my husband’s money and gone
+away--ah, _quel drole du monde!_
+
+_Mais vous_,--Well, I shall forgive you, for you will come back to me.
+And you will write the letter to say that I am wicked and that I must
+not be afraid. And please to tell me that it is not Madame Lea, and
+that my husband will never see her--never as long as we both shall
+live.
+
+                                                        Your devoted,
+                                                      Mimi Gastonard.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+ [Paddy O’Connell replies to Mimi’s letter.]
+
+                               The Headland Hotel, Portrush, Ireland,
+                                                   October 2nd, 1905.
+
+Dear Mimi,--Your pretty letter came to me in confidence, my dear, or I
+would have answered you with a telegram. Though, to be sure, what a
+man puts in a telegram is private enough, neither he nor anyone else
+being able to made head nor tail of it sometimes. What I wanted to say
+to you was just this--that you are a foolish little girl to write to
+me as you did, though there’s no one I’d sooner hear from, and no one
+whose letters I’d be readier to answer.
+
+What’s all this nonsense about the men that watch you, Mimi? Don’t the
+men always watch a pretty woman anyway? I’ll not flatter you at all,
+but if it’s the watching that you’re after, come over to this golfing
+country, and you shall have five and fifty men on the first tee to see
+you off, and as many of the women behind them to declare you’d be
+pretty if it wasn’t for your “faytures.” So have done with your
+nonsense! I’ll be writing Harry this very day and giving him a word of
+my mind about all that you tell me. He’s made strange friends in his
+days of seedtime, and they’re above the ground now at the harvest.
+That’s the way we men have ’em, my dear. We sow friendships in our
+youth and often enough reap thistles in our old age.
+
+Harry was wise to take you away, and I hope he’ll keep you in the same
+place. There’s nothing like change, though precious little of that
+same comes the way of Paddy O’Connell. To me the world is all the
+same, my dear--just a great grass field with a lot of sand-pits
+therein, and your Paddy in one of them for a certainty.
+
+What d’ye think the fellows here had the impudence to do this morning?
+Why, to follow me and old Colonel Willis when we were playing a round
+of the golf. He’s a very wicked habit of using bad language, which I
+have no mind to be listening to, and when I saw a crowd about the
+first tee, I asked them what they supposed they had come out to see.
+And what do you think they answered me? “Why,” says one of them, “we
+haven’t come here to see--we’ve come here to listen.” Be hanged to
+their impudence.
+
+There’s one point in your letter which I haven’t spoken of, Mimi, and
+I speak of it now unwillingly. ’Twould be about the Lea woman. Be sure
+that Harry will see no more of her. I say it, and Paddy O’Connell
+makes no mistakes in a matter of this kind. He’s done with her--he
+wished to be done with her a year ago, but she wouldn’t let him. And
+ask yourself this, my dear--when a man has got the woman he wants, is
+he likely to want the woman he hasn’t got? Think no more of it, I say.
+Be off with him to all the places where there’s music to be heard and
+bright people to be seen, and let me hear of the brave little girl I
+used to know in Paris, and will never forget.
+
+So here’s my love to you wrapped up in a bit of a letter and posted in
+the great Irish country. ’Tis no great spirit I’m writing in, but
+you’d never understand all the trouble that comes to a man who’s
+taking three on the greens where he ought to take two, and can never
+hold a hand at the cards without somebody insulting him. To the devil
+with them all! They put two aces of hearts in the pack of cards I
+played Bridge with last night, and me not discovering it until the
+second rubber. Would ye wonder that I walked out of the window and
+banged it after me.
+
+I write to Harry by this post. If he shouldn’t show you the letter,
+don’t pretend to know what’s in it.
+
+But it’s wisdom, my dear, and that’s a rare commodity in these
+days.--God bless you--and,
+
+                                                     Paddy O’Connell.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+ [The Same Author addresses Henry Gastonard at the Hotel Metropole,
+ Brighton.]
+
+                               The Headland Hotel, Portrush, Ireland,
+                                                   October 2nd, 1905.
+
+Dear Harry,--What’s all this now about your trouble at home and the
+men that are looking after you? Is it dreams, or are spirits about? I
+hear from your angel of a wife that some nonsense has come into both
+your heads. And I haven’t the patience to hear it--so there’s the
+truth.
+
+Now, you have got to be up and doing, and acting the man’s part.
+Remember, you have made as odd a marriage--but as wise a one--as any
+man that ever put a ring in his waistcoat pocket, and couldn’t find it
+there when the parson asked him. Mimi is a little wild animal that you
+took from the prairie--as soft as silk, as gentle to your hand; but,
+man, with the blood of the prairie in her veins. Remember this every
+day you get up from her side--she’s the daughter of savages, and her
+birthright will cry out for a hearing sometimes.
+
+What are all these fears of hers? Are they not the alarm of the
+gazelle which sniffs a lion on the sky line, and would be moving? What
+are the mad outbreaks you speak of--the frenzied desire for change and
+movement? Are they not born of the same impulse which sends a wild
+pony scampering through the forest and keeps him at it until he’s
+exhausted? Be very patient with her. The man who would keep a wild
+bird well should not begrudge the money he spends for a decent
+cage--and a large one to boot.
+
+To be plain with you, Harry, I’d be less troubled about your good
+little wife if I had a better story to tell of her husband. You say
+that you are planning a scheme which will surprise me presently. Did
+you ever hear tell of the South Sea Bubble where a rogue made a
+fortune by advertising a business “presently to be disclosed?” Paddy
+O’Connell is not the one to be putting his hopes for you in any
+company like that. Be up and doing; do you realise that in a few
+months you’ll have no more than a bank clerk, and with a power of
+spending which would shame the Jam of Rorypore?
+
+Did I tell you that I had a letter from America which gave me some
+concern for a few days? A fellow wrote me that he had discovered a
+gold mine, and, being an old friend of my father’s, had put me down at
+the beginning for fifty shares. “These,” says the man, “are now worth
+about a thousand apiece, and there is gold banked against your name in
+New York to that amount.” All that I had to do was to send him a
+cheque for five hundred and forty pounds, the unpaid call on the
+shares. Bedad, I’d have done it but for McCarthy, the solicitor, who’s
+the finest nose in Ireland for scenting out a “do,” and was on the rat
+before he’d got half way out of his hole.
+
+“Why,” says he, “this is the gold brick over again.”
+
+“What brick?” asks I, astonished.
+
+“The gold brick,” says he; “if you go out there, he’ll show you a lump
+of gold as big as a Kerry flint, and there’ll be lead inside of the
+same.”
+
+“You’ve no trust in humanity,” says I--and “Devil a bit,” says he--so
+I’m keeping my money, though I’ve heard of a little scheme for
+shipping Irish horses to the gold-fields of Alaska, which should be
+worth something if worked by honest men. Ay, and that’s the rub.
+Henry, my boy, where do the honest men hide themselves these days? I’d
+sooner look for an old ball in a bunker full of stones than try to
+find one of the same.
+
+You must be coming to Ireland and bringing Mimi with you. We’ll show
+her the wild man’s country together, and, perhaps, be teaching her the
+golf. ’Tis true that neither of us can play, but, my dear boy, the
+best teachers in the world are those who know nothing themselves, as
+you’ll observe both in the realms of art and literature, to say
+nothing of those of sport. Bring the child over and let’s cheer her up
+awhile. I’ll warrant there’ll be men enough to watch her; but she
+won’t be afraid of them, devil a bit.--Your friend, as ever,
+
+                                                                Paddy.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+ [Henry Gastonard makes an urgent appeal to Jules Farman, of the Rue du
+ Quatre Septembre, Paris.]
+
+                                              4, The Walk, Hampstead,
+                                                  October 11th, 1905.
+
+Dear M. Farman,--Your response to my urgent telegram that you should
+leave Paris and come to me immediately, brings the reply that you
+cannot leave until to-morrow. I am therefore writing you this letter
+with what composure I can in the face of this dreadful event, that you
+may be in possession of all the facts before you leave Paris, and able
+to deal with them there, if they are of service to you.
+
+It was at nine o’clock last Sunday night that I first discovered the
+crime which had been committed in my house. I had been absent, perhaps
+the best part of an hour, making a call upon a friend who desired to
+consult me upon a French picture he purchased recently. We returned
+from Brighton upon the previous afternoon, my wife apparently having
+overcome those hallucinations which have troubled her for some weeks
+past, and being quite reconciled to the prospect of a continued
+residence at Hampstead. She was in no way unhappy at the thought of
+being alone, nor did I have any scruples about leaving her. My
+suspicions were first awakened when I discovered that my friend had
+not written to me at all, and that the letter which I received from
+him was a clever but undoubted forgery.
+
+You may imagine with what haste I went back to Hampstead. I had left
+my wife at the piano in the sitting-room, where, the weather being
+chilly, a bright fire burned; but I perceived immediately I approached
+the house that it was in darkness, although a glimmer upon the blind
+still spoke of the firelight. This alarmed me greatly. I tried to open
+the front door with my latchkey, but found that the bolt had been
+slipped. A loud knock and ring obtained no answer. I was now seriously
+alarmed, as you may suppose, and being determined to obtain instant
+admittance to the house, I smashed the large pane of glass in the
+sitting-room, and entered without further delay.
+
+I have told you that I left my wife in this room, seated at the piano
+in the further corner near the French window by which you pass out to
+the garden. That she had been called away without warning was proved
+by the fact that one of the candles still guttered in its socket,
+though too faintly to give any light, and that the sheet of music lay
+upon the floor, indicating that she had been turning the very page
+when the summons came to her. Save for the fact that the fire burned
+low and that the electric light was switched off, there was nothing
+else in this place to excite suspicion. I called my wife loudly by
+name, going to the window and hoping to find her in the garden. She
+did not answer me. I returned to the hall, and immediately discovered
+the body of the man.
+
+Some of the newspapers, I remember, say that he was a Spaniard. I
+should pronounce him nothing of the kind, but one of your own
+countrymen who had lived long in the South. When I found him he was
+quite dead, and had fallen forward upon a wicker seat at the foot of
+the stairs. To this, perhaps, he had staggered after the blow was
+struck. I could not at the first detect any mark upon his body, nor
+did I wish to believe that he was dead; but, running out into the
+street to give the alarm, I sent one of my neighbours for the police,
+another for a doctor. The latter told us the worst immediately. The
+man had been struck down by a heavy implement; his skull had been
+fractured, and he was dead.
+
+It is not my intention, in such a letter as this, to dwell upon my own
+state of mind at such a moment, or to relate to you the trivial
+incidents of such a momentous hour. My wife’s disappearance, the
+evidence of a conflict in the hall, the wild tales told by the
+neighbours, were but the first fruits of a tragedy which paralysed my
+faculties. To all their questions I could give only the vaguest
+answers. I told them that I knew nothing of the wretched man who had
+been struck down in my house; I could give them no clue as to the
+purpose of his visit. I had never seen him before, did not know him,
+could not imagine any business which should bring him to my house.
+
+To the police I confessed Madame Mimi’s story of men who watched her
+and of vague fears which had haunted her. They pressed me for
+particulars more minute, and I could not answer them. Nor did I
+perceive their drift then as I perceive it now. They believe,
+incredible as the supposition is, that the murdered man had been one
+of my wife’s lovers in Paris, that he visited her secretly, and that
+for some reason at present undisclosed she has murdered him.
+
+I must tell you the plain truth: I can keep nothing from you. London
+speaks of little else than this appalling crime; nor am I sure that
+the voice of popular opinion does not agree with the cruel assumptions
+of those officially in charge of this case.
+
+I have, my dear Farman, been associated with you in much that concerns
+my private life, and always in the cause of one dear to me and to whom
+my happiness is for ever linked. You will imagine my situation this
+day in England. I am alone in my house, and there is a hue and cry in
+the streets for the woman I love more than anything on earth. I can
+say nothing to which the world will listen in her defence. My letter
+to the newspapers is printed by some, by others withheld as
+indiscreet. The police themselves but repeat a parrot’s tale--“The man
+came to the house; he was my wife’s lover; he was killed by her,
+aided, it may be, by some of the disreputable friends she knew in
+Paris and who are now hiding her for their own ends.”
+
+Admit, my friend, the preposterous nature of this assumption. You have
+known the child that the Butte called Mimi La Godiche. Is not her
+whole story a refutation of this calumny most base? Did she not guard
+her virtue in a circle where the very name of virtue has long been
+forgotten? Were not her gentleness, her charity, her forbearance the
+wonder even of the outcasts among whom she was thrown? And this child
+is now charged with a lover and with his murder! Oh, monstrous, I say!
+most monstrous and damnable, as I will presently prove to them.
+
+In a common way, I have now no right to speak of fortune; but I have
+been saving of my resources, and still possess a few thousand pounds
+of my own, every penny of which goes to the purpose of my wife’s
+vindication. If others fail, I will find her. If these vigilant police
+cannot track her down, I will do so, going by night and day to my task
+until the truth is known and justice accomplished. Be you my friend in
+this, I beg of you. By all that is of old association and friendship,
+stand by me now and bring your magnificent resources to my aid.
+
+I should tell you that the murdered man was apparently forty years of
+age, small of stature, with a trimmed black beard and a wealth of
+black hair slightly speckled with grey. He was very well dressed,
+apparently a man of the world--but there is nothing on the body to
+tell us who he was nor any clue as yet to his identity. Cross to
+London, I beg of you, and help us to identify him. Our work will begin
+when that is done; it cannot begin before.
+
+So I repeat, come without delay to a man whose friends stand apart
+from him but whose faith is unshaken.
+
+                                                     Henry Gastonard.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXX.
+
+ [Jules Farman sends to Henry Gastonard some account of his
+ stewardship.]
+
+                                               The----Inn, Hampstead,
+                                                  October 16th, 1905.
+
+Dear Sir,--I am sending this by a trusty hand to the New Travellers’
+Club in Piccadilly as your esteemed instructions command me.
+
+I have to-day viewed the body of the murdered man and am glad to tell
+you that I was immediately able to identify him. He is the Count
+d’Antoine, who had an apartment in the Rue Boissiers at Paris, and is
+far from being unknown to our best society.
+
+I had the honour to be employed by the Count some three years ago upon
+a mission whose particulars do not concern us. He was of an old family
+of the Antoines, of Picardy, a well-known shot and horseman, and by no
+means an idle member of the Jockey Club. During recent years his
+fortunes have been at a low ebb, but he made friendships which served
+him well, particularly that of the Marquis de Saint Faur, who will be
+desolated to hear this grievous news.
+
+I will say at once that I am utterly unable to imagine any cause of
+association between Madame Gastonard and this poor gentleman. He was
+not a frequenter of the artistic world; had, to my knowledge, no
+interest in books and pictures; had set foot in Montmartre perhaps
+twice in the whole course of his life. This I am able to tell you
+because I found it necessary to go into the details of his career
+somewhat closely when I had the honour to act for him.
+
+I am compelled, Monsieur, to address you very plainly, and to speak at
+this moment as I would hesitate to do at any other. The assumption
+upon the part of the police in London that Count Antoine had been at
+one time the lover of Madame Gastonard is not supported by any
+evidence, and is to me entirely incredible. I shall refuse to give
+serious consideration to such a supposition until I am compelled to do
+so by testimony I cannot refuse. And I would beg you not to bestow
+upon it a second thought.
+
+We are therefore confronted by this perplexing fact: That a man,
+distinguished in French society, but knowing nothing of London, goes
+over to England to see a lady of whom he had no previous knowledge;
+that he visits her in a remote quarter of the city when she is alone;
+that he is followed there by others and murdered in her very presence.
+To this there can be but one explanation. The Count d’Antoine was the
+instrument of some secret embassy; he desired to see Madame alone; but
+his purpose was known to others, who followed him, and defeated it at
+the last moment. Let us analyse the more material evidence for this.
+
+And first, the desire to see Madame alone. Is it possible to believe
+that the Count’s arrival at the moment of your absence could have been
+coincidence--especially when your own habits are remembered, and the
+rare occasions when you quit your house after nightfall? More probable
+in every way is the assumption that he had watched the house for some
+days, waited patiently for his opportunity, and availed himself
+immediately of your absence.
+
+None the less, the fact is significant--for this is done, observe, not
+by a low fellow, possibly a blackmailer or a beggar, but by a French
+gentleman of position, one justly esteemed for his honourable actions,
+and quite incapable of any dishonour in this purpose. Here our
+difficulties begin; but here also I think that we begin to see the
+light.
+
+Of this it will be time enough to speak when that light shines a
+little brighter, and is strong enough to lead us to some surer ground.
+My duty at the moment is to place the evidence before you in its
+simplest form, and to deduce therefrom such an hypothesis as may be
+both reasonably possible and no less serviceable to us. And here I ask
+you to observe that the Count d’Antoine would not have approached
+Madame as he did unless the disclosure which he had to make must be
+embarrassing to her or to others. The alternative is the assumption
+that he was her lover--an alternative so grotesque that I do not
+permit it so much as to appear in my reckoning.
+
+No, Monsieur; the case is not one of those elementary studies of human
+folly or of human passion, with which the police of France are so
+often called upon to deal. It is the story of a man who carried a
+secret from France to London, who was followed thither by others who
+shared that secret with him, and determined either to prevent its
+disclosure or themselves to profit by it. Such unknown men shadowed
+the Count--it is possible that they watched the house as he watched
+it, and were themselves about to do what he would have done but for
+this tragic interruption. The question remains: Was their object that
+of blackmail, or did they act for some unknown persons who had
+determined to guard at any cost this imagined secret?
+
+It is true, Monsieur, that the crime itself gives no clue to such a
+study of intention. At the first blush I might argue that the
+disappearance of Madame, who, I do not doubt, has been forcibly
+abducted from your house, points to the fact that blackmail is the
+issue; but we are not to forget that an alternative presents itself,
+and that these men having committed this crime, must for very safety’s
+sake also silence the solitary witness of it. So they abduct Madame,
+and hold her as a hostage either until they gain a place of safety or
+have purchased her silence in another way.
+
+Of these alternatives, it is my sincere hope that the former
+approximates to the truth rather than to the latter. Men whose one
+desire is gain will resort to extreme measures reluctantly. I should
+fear less from the avowed criminals of Paris, who have a precious
+secret to sell, than from others whose projects may be more daring.
+Such evidence as I can collect helps me to the belief that it is with
+the criminals of Paris that I have to deal.
+
+Permit me to recapitulate this evidence as briefly as may be.
+
+And firstly, that of your neighbour, Captain Esmond, the officer of
+Marine who witnessed the Count’s arrival at your house. This he
+declares to have been within ten minutes of your departure--so proving
+that the Count was aware of your absence and desired immediately to
+avail himself of an unexpected opportunity.
+
+Secondly, the evidence of the cabman Williams, who testifies that a
+small covered motor-car waited the third part of an hour or more at
+the corner of the street near by the great house, Bell Moor, and
+passed him later on near Swiss Cottage station, going at a great pace
+in the direction of Regent’s Park.
+
+Thirdly, the evidence of the boy, Harry Carter, who spoke to the
+driver of the car and obtained an answer--he believes in the French
+tongue, but is unable to say; so ignorant of any other tongue is he.
+
+Fourthly, the evidence of the servant girl, Cecily Rayner, who
+declares that she saw a man climbing over the garden wall of No. 4
+about the hour of this crime, and that she mentioned the matter to her
+mistress, who immediately went out to the garden but discovered the
+house to be in darkness and heard no sound of any kind.
+
+This, Monsieur, is our evidence. To me the conclusions are very
+natural:
+
+1--That the Count was murdered almost immediately he entered your
+house.
+
+2--That the assassin entered by the way of the garden, passed through
+your sitting-room, and struck the unhappy man while he was actually in
+conversation with Madame.
+
+3--That this crime was so swift, so brutal, and so remorseless that
+your wife fell in a faint--and so lying was carried immediately to the
+carriage without being able to offer any resistance whatever.
+
+4--That the assassin was either in the service of the Count, or so
+situated as to be in possession of his plans and intentions, and thus
+able to forestall them.
+
+Such, Monsieur, is the result of the work I have had the honour to do
+for you. I confess with regret that we have dug but a poor foundation,
+and that the corner-stone of our house is yet to be laid. This task
+must be accomplished not in London but in Paris. I leave to-night by
+the boat train from Charing Cross and beg you to accompany me.
+
+For in Paris alone, Monsieur, shall we discover why the Count
+d’Antoine visited Madame Gastonard, and what was the secret, so
+precious to him and to others, which he could disclose to her alone.
+
+I have the honour to be, Monsieur,
+
+                                               Your obedient servant,
+                                                  Jules Henry Farman.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+ [Henry Gastonard sends Paddy O’Connell some account of his labours in
+ Paris.]
+
+                                               Hôtel St. Paul, Paris,
+                                                  October 19th, 1905.
+
+Dear Paddy,--Your letter speaks of a good heart and a true friendship.
+In your own words, God bless you for it.
+
+I cannot tell you what I have suffered during these terrible days.
+There are few to whom I would speak of it. Sometimes I wish to God
+that I could wake no more. The world moves about me as a rushing sea
+of which I am afraid. I fear for my very reason.
+
+Consider it all and bear with me. I was the happiest man in Europe
+before this trouble came. Nothing in life but Mimi mattered then. Oh,
+Paddy, if I could tell you what it was to have her always with me--to
+wake each day and find her head upon my pillow, to sleep with her
+white arms about my neck. None of us knew her a little bit in the old
+days. But, Paddy, I learned to know her; I learned the truth which few
+men learn--the secret was mine--the sweetness of it past belief.
+
+And to say she is gone from me! If she were dead, the bitterness of
+the truth could not be more poignant. I think of every city as her
+prison; I pass no house in Paris that I do not say, If Mimi were
+there! A thousand suppositions of life and death torment me every day.
+Does she know what I suffer? Is it not possible that she will send a
+message to me? Day answers nothing--the nights are silent. I can but
+wait and pray.
+
+You say that you arrived in London upon the morning after my
+departure. I do not ask you to come to me in Paris, because I know not
+whether Paris will be my home to-morrow, or some other city to which
+destiny may lead me. Be sure that I am prepared for anything. I work
+with Jules Farman literally from the rising of the sun until midnight.
+We have visited more dens in Paris than I would have numbered for all
+the slums of France. And we know no more than the meanest servant of
+the police, who writes his theories in five folios, where my wife is
+hidden, or what this stupendous mystery may be.
+
+You will have read my letter in the English papers, and I have little
+to add to it to-day. It was my purpose to remove the cowardly
+suspicions which hover about the name of one of the purest of women,
+and this I believe that I have done. Is it not monstrous to see how
+ready the world is to doubt a woman’s honour, how willing to
+anticipate her guilt. No reason governs the tongue of scandal, nor
+does justice curb it. Here was a pretty French girl--she is immoral,
+says slander. A man visits her--a man she has never seen before--he is
+her lover, says the multitude. He is foully murdered in her house--she
+must be the murderess. An English police, never clever when any gift
+of subtlety is demanded, will accept no story but the one which
+ministers to its love of the commonplace. A French police, readier to
+look further afield, still believes that the Count was Mimi’s lover.
+And I am alone against these. My love can but speak in a voice which
+the clamour of conviction would drown. Ah, Paddy, if I could but call
+these slanderers one by one before me; could compel them to answer me;
+could wring a cry of justice from their throats. For I alone knew what
+Mimi was, and alone I must defend her.
+
+I have told you that we visited many of the dens upon the further side
+of the Butte. Our reward is some story of the disappearance of the
+notorious ruffian, Jean-le-Mont, and of his aforetime accomplice
+Bar-le-Duc the apache. This was learned at the old Café des Assassins
+when we visited it the second time. If we risked much, you will
+believe how little any thought of personal danger deterred us. Indeed,
+I do truly believe that a ruffian there was within an ace of drawing a
+pistol upon us both--but Farman is the master of such men as these,
+and I am never afraid in his company.
+
+I should tell you that it was mid-day when we visited the Café and
+found no one in charge but a very pretty and very ragged little French
+girl sitting before a charcoal stove in the outer room. She knew Jules
+Farman well, and asked him pointedly why he came there a second time
+in as many days. When he answered her evasively she ran away to tell
+someone else, who proved to be a dirty and unwashed ruffian, by name
+Rogers--for he was an Englishman long known to the English police and
+well watched by the French. This fellow was already drunk--a bottle of
+spirits stood by the side of his filthy bed; a revolver lay close to
+his hand. Had he been sober, there would have been civility enough;
+but in his mad state he flourished his pistol wildly upon our entrance
+and would have shot us for a word. In the end Farman frightened him
+thoroughly, and he told us somewhat abjectly to follow the giant
+Jean-le-Mont and to put our questions to him.
+
+It is possible that this is a clue; it may be mere coincidence. You
+will not have forgotten my letter to you in which I told you of the
+robbery at the Quat-Z-Arts ball, of Mimi’s recovery of my gold
+cigarette-case from this very ruffian, and of his subsequent threats
+against her. But I find it hard to believe that a monster, whose one
+ambition of the day is to steal money for his drink to-morrow should
+remember so pitiful an incident, much less the name of one of the
+thousand friendless girls who haunt the Butte and its vicinity.
+
+In this Jules Farman agrees with me--but he asks the pertinent
+question, Is it not possible that this fellow may be the agent of
+others unknown, and that all he has done has been done for money which
+comes to him from this undiscovered source? I hope that it may be so.
+The police of London are searching Soho and other haunts of Frenchmen
+for any news of him--the police here are not less diligent.
+
+You will not be angry with me, Paddy, for speaking of another matter,
+and one of which you will hear with little pleasure. Yesterday I had a
+letter from Lea d’Alençon inviting me to her house, and assuring me
+that Monsieur le Capitaine was heartily ashamed of his treatment of
+me. There has been, I understand, something resembling a
+reconciliation between the pair, though God knows how long a woman
+will be content to be the amiable companion of a man who prefers to go
+to bed at eleven o’clock at night and considers a dinner at
+Armenonville as the first instalment of his purgatory. I shall not go
+to her house, be sure--nor could I contemplate such an infamy as any
+renewal of this acquaintanceship would imply. None the less, I am
+troubled--for she speaks in a postscript of her ability to help me,
+and declares that my happiness may depend upon a prompt response to
+her invitation.
+
+You say that you are in London awaiting my return. I can give you no
+definite news of this, but I could wish it rather sooner than later.
+Everything here reminds me of Mimi and the happy days. I visited the
+old Maison du bon Tabac the other day and spent an hour in its empty
+rooms. Not a scrawl upon its shabby walls, not a broken pane in its
+windows but spoke to me of my little wife and the golden days which
+are no more. And just as it is tumbling into decay, so, Paddy, is the
+house of my own life falling. I see the great city of Paris below
+me--it speaks of eternal things and of the darkness which is eternal.
+The green woods rise beyond, and I remember that they gave me Mimi in
+the days of the springtime, even as their falling leaves may hide her
+to-day from my sight.
+
+All that is here, the voice once musical of Paris, the glare of her
+lights, the rolling traffic in the streets, the unceasing business of
+pleasure--all this has no meaning for me. I pass by as a man who has
+no place in such a pageant, who must walk apart until the end. Even
+the memory of the golden days has become an evil thing. I shut the old
+pictures from my eyes, but they rise up to mock me. Ah, Paddy, the day
+is dark indeed, when a man’s youth stands to him for an evil memory,
+and he would blot the yesterday of life from the book he has written.
+
+Write to me often, old friend. Remember how very much I am alone. If
+circumstances seem to promise a continued stay here, I will beg you to
+come to me. Meanwhile, find me, as always, dear Paddy,
+
+                                                         Your friend,
+                                                     Harry Gastonard.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+ [In which Paddy O’Connell advised his friend Harry to pay a visit.]
+
+                                      Jack Straw’s Castle, Hampstead,
+                                                  October 21st, 1905.
+
+Dear Harry,--I have no telegram from you this morning, and am
+remaining here. Be good enough to wire upon receipt of this to say if
+you would sooner have me in Paris or London--for ’tis little I care
+where, so long as I may be of service to you.
+
+Your letter to the daily papers has done a power of good. I had no
+idea that any friend of mine could write with so much feeling and good
+sense, and I congratulate you upon it. The town, I am told, continues
+to talk of little else--but you have given the affair a new turn, and
+the newspaper editors have more than they can do with the letters that
+come to them.
+
+Now, my boy, I am going to speak very plainly to you. Had you asked me
+a month ago whether you should go to Madame Lea’s house, I would have
+turned my back upon you for the question, and put it out of your power
+to ask me another for many a long day.
+
+But this is not my advice this morning. There is something lying at
+the back of my head which may be common sense or may be a fool’s
+burden; but it is crying to me all the time that a woman may be the
+heart of this mystery, and to a woman you may well go for that news
+which no man is able to give you.
+
+I say, go to this Lea d’Alençon and hear what she has to tell you.
+When your dear wife is found, ’twill be Paddy O’Connell who will make
+his advice good and relieve you of the burden of it. Go to her, and
+ask her plainly what is the meaning of the postscript to her letter.
+She’ll tell you in five minutes. There never yet was a woman born who
+could keep good or bad news from the man who meant to have it from
+her.
+
+I shall say no more, lest I should put thoughts into your mind and
+inspire you with a hope that has no justification in the facts. One
+thing I do ask you to believe, and it is this: that if your wife is
+alive and well, and I believe her to be both, we shall have a message
+from her before many days have run. ’Tis a poor sort of a house which
+can keep a clever woman from speaking out of its windows when she has
+the mind to be eloquent--and Mimi is no singing bird to be content
+with a spoonful of canary seed. We shall hear from her, I say, and the
+news will be good news. So go to visit Madame with a light heart--and
+be sure you carry yourself well before her--for a woman tells little
+to a coward, and this lady may have much to tell.
+
+I would have you to know that your cousin Martha stands with me in
+this opinion, and is all for your going to Madame Lea. “’Tis a woman’s
+story,” says she, “and a woman must tell it.” I find the little body
+mightily concerned about the whole business, and as full of ideas as a
+pod of peas. She has been to Hampstead almost every day since I was
+here, and we have ransacked your home together for the clues we did
+not discover. A livelier companion I would never wish to find, and,
+being Arthur’s wife, I forgive her much--even her calling me a fool
+for wanting to put an advertisement in the papers advising Mimi that
+you are in Paris.
+
+As for Cousin Arthur, there’s a man that has found some heart at last.
+I’ll do him the justice to believe that his sympathy is gratis, and
+not a return for the seven thousand a year of your money which he
+hopes to get in the springtime, and thereafter to preach the Sermon on
+the Mount from the neighbourhood of Park-lane. I have here by me, as I
+write, a copy of Taylor’s “Holy Living” and a new edition of Smiles’
+“Self Help,” which he has just sent down to you. There is also a slip
+of texts underlined, with which I take leave not to trouble you. It is
+well meant, and it would be sinful for us to mock him because he wears
+a Roman collar and is a little less human than the rest of us.
+
+Don’t fail to let me have the news. The best part of my own is told by
+the newspapers before I can breathe a word of it. They have made a
+profitable business of this mystery, and there is not a drawing-room,
+a club, or a kitchen which does not discuss it every day and all the
+days. For you, yourself, I find the warmest sympathy--and it is
+possible that you have already done something to earn the same for
+your dear wife. God bless her, wherever she is, and send her back to
+us before our hearts are broken.--Your friend,
+
+                                                     Paddy O’Connell.
+
+P.S.--I have just sent a telegram to an editor man asking him what the
+devil he means by an article in his paper this morning suggesting that
+Mimi is shielding somebody, and that’s why the police cannot trace
+her. It is necessary to be discreet and patient, but if he doesn’t
+contradict it to-morrow, I’ll go down and break every bone in his
+body, just to show my good opinion of him.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+ [The Reverend Arthur Warrington thanks Paddy O’Connell for services
+ rendered.]
+
+                                       The Red Farm, Beldon, Suffolk,
+                                     Eve of the Feast of St. Raphael.
+
+Dear Mr. O’Connell,--I am much obliged by your letter and packages
+containing the little books you were unfortunately unable to deliver
+to my poor cousin. I thank you also for your friendliness towards Mrs.
+Warrington during her mission or charity to the great Metropolis.
+
+That there is no further news concerning this unhappy affair
+distresses me greatly. The wages of sin are dreadful indeed; leading,
+it would appear, beyond the promises of Holy Writ to these awful
+mysteries this twentieth century brings before us. I have no doubt
+that poor Harry meant well when he married this girl; but I cannot
+forget that he was not blessed by Holy Church, and that he is now
+reaping the fruit of his indifference.
+
+A home broken up, this dreadful suspicion hovering about his poor
+wife’s name--oh, my dear sir, what moral lessons do not these things
+convey. Let us offer him what consolation we can, remembering with the
+poet Shakespeare that--murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
+with most miraculous organ.
+
+I pray God that these assassins will be brought to justice
+speedily.--And am, with renewed thanks, my dear sir,
+
+                                                    Yours faithfully,
+                                                   Arthur Warrington.
+
+P.S.--Would you be good enough to remind Mrs. Warrington, who in her
+distress may have overlooked so trifling a detail of the domestic
+curriculum, that the patterns of the chintz did not reach me from
+Smallgroves, and that she would do well to see the people about it
+while she is in London?
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+ [Henry Gastonard tells Paddy O’Connell of his visit to Madame Lea.]
+
+                                               Hôtel St. Paul, Paris,
+                                                  October 24th, 1905.
+
+Dear Paddy,--I had called upon Madame Lea before your letter reached
+me. This was done at Jules Farman’s request, for, be sure, that which
+you were thinking was not forgotten by a man so able.
+
+I found Madame alone in a handsome apartment in the Avenue Kleber. She
+is not changed a wit, is the same beautiful languorous creature that
+we knew of old time.
+
+I told you in my last letter that there is some talk of a
+reconciliation between her and her husband. This I do not believe,
+preferring the view that the Captain’s affections are temporarily
+engaged elsewhere. A man who is kind toward his own failings generally
+has some charity to spare for those of his wife. Possibly, the man is
+merely a philosopher--I do not make myself his judge.
+
+It is sufficient to say that Madame received me with great cordiality,
+impressed upon me the fact that we were alone and bade me open my
+heart to her. If I did not do this, be sure that my attitude was by no
+means irresponsive. I had come to her house to learn if Madame Lea had
+a secret, and, learning that, to obtain it from her if that were
+possible. A false word would have ruined all. I realised that Mimi’s
+very life might depend upon success or failure; nor was I unaware that
+my own happiness might be won or lost in that very room.
+
+We begin with a talk that was commonplace enough--her health and mine,
+my departure from Paris, the absurdities of our last meeting--and so
+to Mimi and my marriage by a natural sequence which diplomacy
+demanded. I found her eloquent immediately when Mimi’s name was
+mentioned. A woman will discuss a man’s love affair readily enough;
+there is no surer passport to his confidence, perhaps to his heart.
+And Lea d’Alençon, you will remember, speaks with little fluency upon
+any other subject.
+
+Imagine, Paddy, a considerable apartment furnished with all the
+precarious grace of the Louis XV. period--but flauntingly modern and
+garish in its tone. Say that the walls are panelled in silk of a deep
+golden hue; put long mirrors wherever there are niches for them; place
+clocks of many kinds upon the tables and in the angles--Cupids marking
+the hour of the day; the Hesperides shouldering the golden apple;
+“Father Time treading Gaea beneath his giant feet”--all the baubles
+which are sold in the Rue de la Paix, and others which came God knows
+whence.
+
+The furniture itself was bought, I believe, at the last Exhibition. It
+is fine but new, oh, so new!--and Lea’s gown of white and gold brocade
+is caught up by it as a flower of bizarre magnificence suitable to so
+bright a bed. As for Madame, her eyes are as black as ever, her hair
+as splendid--but I think the sun has pencilled that pallid face and
+that the years have not forgotten her. Not until I spoke of my
+marriage did she betray her wonted energy--not until that moment did
+the natural woman reveal itself.
+
+“Why did you not tell me that you were in love with the girl when
+first I saw you?” she asked. “I would have helped you, Henry--is not a
+woman always willing to help a man in love?”
+
+“That, my dear lady,” said I, “is an abstruse speculation. And I am in
+no mood for argument. Do you not know what the papers are saying of my
+wife?”
+
+She posed languidly and watched me with some cunning.
+
+“I am forgetting how to read English,” she said, “and, Henry, you have
+forgotten how to teach me.”
+
+This I passed by. Were Lea d’Alençon upon the scaffold, she would
+open a flirtation with the executioner.
+
+“The news is in your own journals,” I said, “and why not? Does Paris
+wish to forget one whose picture had no second in last year’s Salon?
+But I see that she does--and, Lea, you know the story as well as I do.
+Let us abandon the preliminaries, God knows I have little heart to
+begin at all.”
+
+She shivered slightly, I knew not why; and for some while her thoughts
+appeared to be voyaging afar. Presently she recollected herself and
+addressed me seriously.
+
+“Did you know the Count d’Antoine?”
+
+“Absolutely, no.”
+
+“Never met him while you were in Paris?”
+
+“Never once--but remember my life. The Butte knows little of
+society--if there is any democracy in this world, it is that of the
+atelier and the conservatoire. At the Hôtel St. Paul I was merely an
+English gentleman seeing Paris. Why should I meet the Count
+d’Antoine----”
+
+“But your wife----”
+
+“Would you say that she knew him?”
+
+She paused and bit her lip. I could imagine that her thoughts were
+travelling again. From this moment, I cannot tell you why, I began to
+suspect her. And, Paddy, remember what suspicion meant to me, the
+hopes and fears of it, the straw upon the stream of a woman’s caprice,
+the light upon the crest, to lose which were a torture.
+
+“Would you say that Mimi knew the Count, Lea?”
+
+She smiled now--a wan smile, not of jest, but of her own endeavour to
+deceive.
+
+“There were few pretty women whom the Count did not know----”
+
+“Then you were among the number?”
+
+“I met him twice at the house of the American, Madame Martin, and
+again at the Austrian Embassy. A very handsome man, one of those who
+bewitch women with the notion that they have a thousand stories, but
+would never tell them. Oh, yes, I knew the Count.”
+
+“And you believe it possible that Mimi knew him?”
+
+“Everything is possible in Paris--did she not frequent the gardens?”
+
+“It is a lie--she knows the West as a tourist from my own country. Her
+home was on the mountain.”
+
+“You say so, Henry--oh, forgive me, I am trying to help you. If she
+did not know the Count, why did he go to her house?”
+
+“The question I am here to ask you, Lea.”
+
+“To ask me--am I a sorceress, Henry?”
+
+“In so far as a sorceress is usually cleverer than her kind, yes.”
+
+“Then you think--oh, but it is impossible, it is ridiculous.”
+
+She laughed aloud, forcing herself to the mood as an instrument may be
+forced by cleverness to a note of discord foreign to it. I perceived
+now that she had brought me to her house for curiosity’s sake--not to
+tell me what she knew, but to ascertain the extent of my own
+suspicions. The discovery maddened me. I could have caught her arms,
+and thrust her down, and compelled her to confess. The torture she put
+upon me was as deliberate as the insult--and yet I suffered both for
+Mimi’s sake.
+
+“It is ridiculous,” she repeated, “the same folly which sends a man to
+a woman when his trouble is a woman. I knew the Count; knew him as I
+have told you. Would he speak of every chit the atelier or the cabaret
+discovered for him? It is madness, Monsieur Henry. You know that I
+cannot help you.”
+
+“And yet you invite me to your house?”
+
+“To offer you my sympathy, my friendship--to hear you tell me why you
+did this thing; you, who could have a thousand friends among your own
+people, to seek one out of the great caravanserai of irresponsibles,
+to prate of her virtue, to fight for her, to marry her--is not a
+woman’s curiosity justly provoked?”
+
+“And for curiosity’s sake you sent for me to-day--pardon me. I shall
+answer that question for you. There was something beyond curiosity,
+Madame d’Alençon, there was fear.”
+
+She opened her eyes in wild alarm at this. I had seen her angry
+before, but never as she was angry now. There is something of the
+tigress in every passionate woman--a good deal of it in Lea
+d’Alençon. For a moment I could almost contemplate a second
+tragedy--and I do believe, Paddy, had there been a weapon to her hand,
+she would have struck me.
+
+“Fear!” she cried, raising herself upon a frail arm, and making no
+attempt to modulate the shrill echo of her alarm. “Of what, then, am I
+afraid, Monsieur Gastonard?”
+
+“You are afraid of discovery, Madame d’Alençon.”
+
+She laid her head back upon the cushions, and laughed defiantly. I can
+give you no better account of her speech and actions than to say that
+they were those of an enraged woman whose breeding has no reserves of
+self control. A washerwoman complaining at the tub, a virago at the
+doors of a tavern had not been a spectacle less repulsive.
+
+“Discovery, Monsieur Gastonard; a precious word, discovery! Are you
+mad? Must I say that you have lost your reason? Discovery of whom, of
+what--of the fact that all the world knows, that you married a
+_noctambule_, and have been whining ever since for sympathy; that your
+Jezebel is as old in her vices as she is young in years; that you were
+the dupe, the victim of the _canaille_ of the Butte--must I say
+this?--or shall I order you from my house; call my servants to protect
+me? Shall I do that, Monsieur Gastonard?”
+
+I kept my temper; the stake was, beyond all belief, momentous to me. A
+false step would have put me outside her door; and remember how
+premature I had been, how much the unwise agent of my own unwarranted
+impulses.
+
+“You are very angry with me,” I said; and added, “perhaps with reason.
+Of course, I should not have put it in that way, though it is a method
+which others will not hesitate to adopt----”
+
+She turned at this--quickly, as one alarmed, and called to reason by
+something which hitherto had escaped her reasoning.
+
+“Others, Monsieur Gastonard?”
+
+“Certainly--others. There is my friend, Jules Farman, of the Secret
+Police. He knows much that neither of us might wish him to know. And
+please do not forget that there are circumstances of this crime which
+have set the whole world by the ears. There is not a policeman in
+Paris or in London who will not move heaven and earth to get at the
+truth. So we are all concerned in the matter--and if anyone of us has
+been foolish, said or done something which might implicate us, now is
+the time to set it right. I put this to you as a friend. Tell me why
+you sent for me to-day, and if the confession is to your disadvantage,
+I will accept your confidence as an atonement.”
+
+There never was, Paddy, such a wild arrow shot in all this world
+before, and never will be again, I do believe. Nothing but a dogged
+faith in my own convictions could have bent such a bow. This woman had
+sent for me; her manner sufficiently declared her embarrassment.
+Unless she had something to offer me, my visit must end in her
+discomfiture. Lea d’Alençon is not the woman to bring such an affront
+upon herself. This I perceived, and in my mad desire for the truth
+could have knelt at her very feet, and implored her to aid me. She
+knew--the key was locked in the safe of her intrigues. My God! What a
+torture to say as much, and to realise my own impotence!
+
+Well, the shot was fired, and the target touched. She had listened to
+me with her eyes wide open, and her mouth pursed up, as though anger
+were held at bay a little while by reflection. When she spoke, her
+voice had lost its shrill timbre of protest, and all its pleasing
+qualities been regained.
+
+“We are all foolish sometimes, Monsieur Gastonard. I was foolish when
+I counted you among the number of my friends. Let us not speak of it.
+You say that I brought you to my house because I know something. Very
+well; I do know something, and you shall know it--the dead Count was
+your wife’s lover; that is what I know, Monsieur Gastonard.”
+
+“It is a lie,” said I. And I leaned back in my chair, and watched her
+critically. “So poor a lie that so clever a woman as Madame Lea should
+not have told it.”
+
+She turned her eyes away from me, and continued her infamous story,
+unabashed and unashamed.
+
+“It is a lie,” I repeated--but her words held me to my chair as though
+an unknown hand caught me by the throat. “Why do you tell me so
+foolish a lie, Madame Lea?”
+
+She rose and came across to me. The spell of her mendacity was broken.
+
+“I tell it because I loved you,” she said. “Yes, yes, yes, it is the
+truth, and no lie. I loved you, and you left me for this creature,
+this _canaille_, this girl of the fêtes and the circus. Shall I keep
+the truth from you now? She murdered the Count when he had no more
+money, and his presence was an embarrassment. Do not his friends know
+it--did not the Marquis de Saint Faur shut his door upon him for that
+very reason?”
+
+“I will ask the Marquis,” said I. But I could hardly speak the word
+for trembling.
+
+“Yes, yes,” she said, “ask him--but you will have far to go, for he is
+at Corfu, upon his yacht.”
+
+“I beg your pardon; he returned to Paris last night.”
+
+It was as though I had struck her in the face. She stood there as some
+marble figure of distress, motionless, with a fixed and unchanging
+smile upon her lips.
+
+“The Marquis has returned?”
+
+“As I say--last night. I am going now to his house.”
+
+I turned upon my heel, and left her. She had not moved from the place
+when I passed out. I could see that a word would have unsealed her
+lips and cast her, a mendicant for pity, at my feet. But I went
+straight on to the hall and the street, and calling the first cab
+which came to my view, I ordered the man to drive me to the house of
+Monsieur le Marquis de Saint Faur.
+
+He was not within--he is to see me to-night.
+
+Ah, Paddy, If I could but know what he will say--if I could but be
+sure that this foul lie will pass no human lips again!
+
+The heart has gone out of me--I must watch and wait through the long
+night--
+
+                                                         Your friend,
+                                                     Harry Gastonard.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+ [We meet the Marquis de Saint Faur and another old friend.]
+
+                                               Hôtel St. Paul, Paris,
+                                                  October 25th, 1905.
+
+Dear Paddy,--I am keeping my promise, and, at much inconvenience,
+hastening to let you know, both what was done last night, and what is
+proposed to be done to-day. That you have no news I gather from your
+silence. Had there been but a single ray of light, I know with what
+speed your kindness would have winged it on to Paris. An empty
+letter-bag chills my hope with its intimation of despair and
+hopelessness.
+
+Oh, I cannot get away from it, Paddy--asleep or awake, the question
+rolls in my ears with a sound of drums. She is alive--she is dead. A
+thousand arguments push reason and patience aside, now bidding me
+accuse, now reproach her--anon chanting an office of black conspiracy,
+again deluding me with fair promises. For would not Mimi, of all
+people in the world, have found a way, if any door were open to her
+cleverness? What trick, I ask, what mendacity keeps her silent? Has an
+unknown assassin dared a second crime, that the first may be covered?
+And why, and why--why did this come to me in the springtime of my
+happiness? What mockery of my destiny sent it to my door at such a
+time?
+
+I have seen the Marquis de Saint Faur, and he has told me that Lea’s
+story is a black lie. The arrows of a base calumny rarely stick,
+Paddy, but they prick and bruise, and often leave a scar. I am ashamed
+of having gone to his house, and yet not ashamed. His manner perplexed
+me utterly--we make nothing of him, and yet we may not dismiss him. Is
+it not becoming a mystery beyond all hope, all thought?
+
+I am convinced of one thing, and it is this, that Lea d’Alençon never
+intended me to hear the Marquis’s name. It escaped her lips by
+accident, at a moment of stress, when the lie meant all to her, and
+the man who would deny it was, as she believed, beyond the confines of
+appeal. An accident of speech, a chance word uttered by Jules Farman,
+informed me of St. Faur’s unexpected return to Paris, and last night I
+called upon him at his hotel.
+
+This was at nine o’clock. Despite the season, the famous corridor of
+the Ritz Hôtel showed me many familiar faces. I heard the American
+tongue, with its shrill suggestion of dominance; passed by notorious
+“affairs” and discovered the Marquis at last, one of four at a little
+table, and two of them as well dressed and elegant women as I have
+ever seen in this famous place.
+
+The Marquis himself is all that his ancestors might have been before
+the “grand manner” perished in France. Tall and stately, with a
+bearing dignified beyond words, his bow is not to be matched off the
+boards of the Theatre Français; while his reception of me was that of
+a great nobleman who has been unwelcomely disturbed but would utter no
+complaint. In his hand he held the card upon which I had scribbled the
+words--“concerning Monsieur le Comte d’Antoine.” But I had looked to
+see him in a private room, and my apologies were expressed with all
+the earnestness I could command.
+
+“Mr. Gastonard,” he asked me, “must this be urgent?”
+
+“It shall be when Monsieur le Marquis may please--but no words will
+express my gratitude if it may be soon.”
+
+“I have an apartment here,” he went on, “will you do me the honour to
+come at eleven o’clock to-night?”
+
+I said that I would do so, and turned away. He had named me aloud,
+however, and one of the women--of singular beauty and much sweetness
+of manner--uttered an audible exclamation, and stared, I thought, more
+directly than good manners permitted. At the door the porter, who
+knows me well, told me that the Marquis was staying in the house.
+
+“And the ladies with him?” I asked.
+
+“They are the Princess Hélène of Ilidze and her cousin, Monsieur.”
+
+There was nothing to call for remark here, and I went out and paced
+the boulevards until the appointed hour arrived. In the old days,
+Paddy, nothing gave me more delight than to walk alone in Paris when
+the lights were blazing and the cafés black with people and all
+the boulevards alive with the hum of leisure and frivolity. What a
+scene unmatched, I used to think it; what drolleries one witnessed;
+comedies fed upon sugar and water; tragedies brooding upon black
+coffee and a twopenny cigar--everywhere the fiddlers thrashing
+unoffending catgut; women talking against time--men against their
+sweet persuasiveness--waiters playing the acrobat--fat proprietors of
+restaurants perspiring and beaming at their doors--what a scene and
+what a people!
+
+And the Jehu on his box and the turbulent sea of crashing traffic
+coming whence God alone knew--the ferocious cries of peaceable
+men--the glittering pavements--the spreading aureoles of monstrous
+lights--theatre flares as triumphal arches of shimmering fire--great
+wide windows to bewitch you with their merry revelations--the throat
+of Paris grown hoarse but weary--ah, I say, what scenes and what a
+people! And yet I could pass them by to-night without a thought,
+believe that they mocked me, cry upon the happiness and the laughter
+of others, say that the music was discordant, the women so many
+Jezebels, the men a company of chattering fools, the whole city a
+pandemonium whence I would willingly escape. So does trouble war upon
+us, so is this land fair or a wilderness, as fortune shall dictate.
+
+The Marquis was in his room when I returned at eleven o’clock. He wore
+a black smoking-cap and had lighted a cigar. You know the rooms upon
+the first floor of the Ritz, little arbours, as it were, cut out of
+those vast walls, but arbours furnished as the old châteaux were, and
+often borrowing the treasures of châteaux for their ornaments. The
+apartment was lighted by a single reading-lamp, placed upon a table at
+the Marquis’s side. Whisky and soda and tumblers stood to hand. He was
+alone and I perceived at once that he received me not unwillingly and
+with some curiosity.
+
+“You are here to speak of my poor friend the Count d’Antoine,” he
+said. “I know your name, Mr. Gastonard, and the story of these recent
+days. Be good enough to sit down. I regret that I should have been
+compelled to defer the hour of our meeting, but the reasons were
+self-evident. There are the cigarettes, if you will smoke.”
+
+He lighted one himself, standing with his back towards me, but
+scanning my face, as I could see, in the mirror above the
+chimney-piece. Fear of my own quick tongue bade me imitate him and
+smoke--for there is no weapon of discreet speech so sure as a
+cigarette in the mouth. When he had seated himself, I stated my
+purpose very frankly.
+
+“Yes,” I said, “it would be about the Count d’Antoine. He was very
+well known to you, Marquis--I may say that he was your friend.”
+
+“Most willingly--one of the oldest of my friends and one of the most
+esteemed.”
+
+“Then my second question needs no apology. I have been told that my
+wife was his mistress. Is that story true or is it false?”
+
+He did not answer me immediately. Perhaps my own pitiful state alarmed
+him, for I could not master my distress. It was there for all the
+world to spy upon--a man’s heart stripped for others to revile.
+
+“Is the story true or false, Monsieur le Marquis? Pardon my
+insistence--your answer means more to me than I can tell you.”
+
+Again a little spell of silence, and that impenetrable mask upon an
+immobile face to defy me. Oh, my God, why did he not speak? Did honour
+forbid, or the truth?
+
+“I understand you very well, Mr. Gastonard,” he said at last, “and I
+think that I may reply as you would wish--”
+
+“You think, Monsieur?”
+
+He waved the objection aside a little masterfully.
+
+“Who can answer for a man’s secrets--much less for a woman’s? I
+believe that my friend the Count had never seen Madame Gastonard until
+he visited her in London.”
+
+“Thank God for that--thank God!”
+
+“He had never mentioned her name to me--so much I remember perfectly.
+And I think he would have done so if the facts were as you suppose.”
+
+“I suppose nothing, Marquis. A woman sent me here--Madame Lea
+d’Alençon.”
+
+“Madame d’Alençon--ha!”
+
+He smiled quietly, but a phase of anger succeeded the smile, and upon
+that a glance of mistrust.
+
+“Madame d’Alençon--what does she know of my poor friend?”
+
+“She met him at the house of Madame Martin, the American. This story
+of an intrigue reached me first from her lips--she sent me to you
+believing that you were at Corfu upon your yacht. I had learned by
+accident of your altered plans--and so I came to you.”
+
+He nodded his head, staring down into the blazing fire of logs which
+had been kindled upon my entry.
+
+“You did very well,” he exclaimed, “very well to come to me. The Count
+was more than my friend--he was almost a brother to me.”
+
+“Then you know why he went to England?”
+
+He did not look up, but his very attitude revealed something to me.
+This was a question he would willingly have been spared.
+
+“I--what should I know of it?”
+
+“Pardon me--you were intimate friends, and the supposition is not
+illogical. Then you knew nothing, Monsieur?”
+
+“Of what happened, nothing. Had it been otherwise, the police would
+have heard from me the same day.”
+
+“And you hazard nothing, Monsieur le Marquis?”
+
+He smoked quietly for a little while--but answered me eventually by an
+evasion.
+
+“You are asking me many questions--may I put one or two to you?”
+
+“I shall answer everything, Marquis.”
+
+“They will be embarrassing questions, but they are not put without a
+purpose.”
+
+“That is understood.”
+
+“You first met Madame Gastonard at one of the Fêtes about Paris, I
+think?”
+
+“At the Fête de Neuilly.”
+
+“And were attracted by something in her appearance or manner? Would it
+be very difficult to tell me a little intimately of that, Mr.
+Gastonard?”
+
+“By no means. I was attracted firstly by her originality, and then by
+my belief that she was not born amongst these people. A Louis Quinze
+clock is beautiful at Fontainebleau, but you pass it quickly where
+there are hundreds like it. In the Rue de Pigalle one would remark it
+immediately. I saw that she had not been born to such an environment.
+Her voice had the timbre of birth. There were gestures, phrases, a
+manner which cried loudly for a truer story. I stayed to talk to her,
+as one might rest to pick a rose in a swamp. That was the oddest
+thing, Marquis--the advantage remained with her. No one to my
+knowledge has ever patronised Mimi the Simpleton.”
+
+“Why did they give her that name?”
+
+“I can but surmise. She lived in her dreams apart from them. Their
+world was not her world. She walked through it with skirts lifted,
+upon the tiptoe of her birthright. To me it always seemed that her
+mind strove ceaselessly to recall something which illness or terror
+had blotted from its recollection. She was a born leader of the
+people--she ruled by right of blood--the most ignorant were conscious
+of it.”
+
+“And she could give you no account of her past?”
+
+“So meagre an account that its pursuit were hopeless. She remembered
+an old woman named Marie, the great white road from Blois to Orleans,
+voices in a wood--and then the Showman’s booth. The ‘beforetime’ lay
+in the golden mists of childhood. She believes that it was a happy
+time--this memory of a burden as of happiness has come through the
+mists and has never been laid down. Oh, yes, Mimi was happy in her
+childhood, I have no doubt of it.”
+
+“You pursued your inquiries none the less, Mr. Gastonard?”
+
+“I have spent thousands of pounds in the quest----”
+
+“And nothing further has been learned?”
+
+“Nothing has been learned.”
+
+He nodded his head, and for quite a long while said no word. He was
+standing up when next he spoke and he looked me fairly in the face.
+
+“Mr. Gastonard,” he exclaimed, “I sent the Comte d’Antoine to
+England.”
+
+“You, Monsieur!”
+
+“As I say, I sent him to England, to see Madame Gastonard, and, if
+possible, to persuade her to pay a brief visit to Paris.”
+
+“Monsieur--Monsieur!”
+
+“For a purpose of an honourable, I will say, in fact, of a noble
+character; but one I cannot reveal even to you.”
+
+“Then you know her story, Marquis?”
+
+“I believe that I know it--but as belief which is not certainty might
+work an inconceivable mischief, my lips are sealed.”
+
+“But--but----”
+
+My astonishment did not move him. He continued in an inflexible tone.
+
+“I sent the Comte d’Antoine to England to verify certain facts which
+had come to my knowledge. He was murdered in your house; but how or
+why he was murdered you have my word that I do not know.”
+
+“You can imagine no reason--think of no possible agent?”
+
+“Of none, or his name would have been known to the police these many
+days.”
+
+“Then I am not to say that the Count’s errand concerned others?”
+
+“By no means could it possibly have concerned any human being other
+than the person who prompted it.”
+
+“Not an errand where money was the issue?”
+
+“Absolutely not--I can tell you no more; I am not permitted to tell
+you more.”
+
+“Having told me sufficient to make me the most miserable man in Paris!
+Are we not now become conspirators in this, Marquis? Are not our
+interests common interests?”
+
+“In a measure, yes--I see that you suffer much.”
+
+“Marquis,” I said quietly, “I would give half the years of my life to
+see my wife to-night.”
+
+“A sentiment most honourable. Should it be possible for me to further
+it, count upon my warm endeavour.”
+
+“Meanwhile, you are unable to help me?”
+
+“I am quite unable, Mr. Gastonard.”
+
+I did not press the point. Here was a man of honour of the old type;
+my knowledge of such men told me that I might question him for a
+century and learn nothing if honour sealed his lips. Perhaps some
+shadow of a wonderful truth already crossed my path, but made it the
+blacker because of these events. Of one fact I had no doubt. He was as
+ignorant as I of the story of the Count’s death and of Mimi’s
+abduction from my house.
+
+“I am quite unable to help you at present,” he repeated, “and it is
+very probable that I shall be leaving Paris to-morrow upon the voyage
+of which you have heard. Before I go, let me say that you have my good
+wishes, my warmest wishes for your success. Good night, Mr. Gastonard;
+do not hesitate to write to me--or to come to me, if that be
+advisable. And be sure of my interest whatever happens.”
+
+I thanked him, plainly perceiving that he wished to terminate the
+interview and that any further question would be unwelcome to him. It
+was after midnight when I went out to meet a chill night, with a
+drizzle of hostile rain which drove the people from the boulevards and
+sent the loafers to the baser cafés. For my part, although there were
+cabs at the doors of the Ritz, I determined to walk to my hotel. So
+many strange thoughts came to me, so many hopes, so many fears have
+been my portion, that I have learned to dread the constraint of rooms
+and turn to the liberty of streets and the darkness. Here, under God’s
+sky, be there a heaven of stars or a veil of cloud, I may still
+believe that my little wife is looking upward, that her eyes are
+cleaving the night as mine, and that the same prayer which I breathe
+is also upon her lips.
+
+Ah, Paddy, will it ever be that I shall wake again to find her
+pillowed head upon my arm, to know that I have won her love and will
+keep it to the end? If Paris would but answer me that--the mocking
+crowds, the darkened canopy of night, the unknown voices which torment
+me! Shall to-morrow be as yesterday and all the morrows after? Oh, God
+forbid!--I cannot lose her; I will not cease to hope that even as she
+came to me in this city of my youth, so shall Paris surrender her now
+in the hour of my need.--Your friend,
+
+                                                     Harry Gastonard.
+
+I had closed this letter, but must open it again. Jules Farman brings
+me a strange piece of news. It may mean much or little. He followed
+me, it seems, to the Ritz last night believing that I also had been
+followed now for some days in Paris. He had waited some twenty minutes
+in the Place Vendome, when a man passed whom he recognised. It was our
+old friend the famous ruffian Jean-le-Mont, from the old Café of the
+Assassins. The man lingered a little while outside the Ritz, and then
+went on toward the Boulevards.
+
+Now, what does this mean--what does your wisdom make of it? Jules
+Farman will say nothing. He has been very silent these last few days.
+Is it possible that our first ideas are to be justified? I begin to
+believe so, even if the light be dim and the path uncertain. Tell me
+what you think and do not fail to write to me. I am very lonely,
+Paddy. There is not a man in all the world so wistful of sympathy as
+your friend Harry to-night.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+ [Paddy O’Connell writes a brief letter from Jack Straw’s Castle at
+ Hampstead.]
+
+                                      Jack Straw’s Castle, Hampstead,
+                                                    October 27, 1905.
+
+Dear Harry,--I’ve no mind to be writing letters on a Friday, but as we
+can’t blot that same day out of the week, anyway, and there’s good
+luck to come in this world as well as bad, here goes for a trial of
+it.
+
+I am still fixed upon this wild heath, though God knows why. You tell
+me neither to come nor to go, so here I am for the middle course, as
+the car-driver said when he put me into the canal for fear of spoiling
+the banks with his wheels. Little Martha I see every day, and we’ve
+had more than one lunch and dinner at the foreign cafés down West, on
+the off-chance that we might do some good to you--though this is not a
+matter that should be named to her preaching man of a husband. What a
+poor thing he is, to be sure--preaching on a text of St. Paul about
+marriage directly her back is turned, and giving it out to the flock
+that celibacy is the blessed state! She’ll give him celibacy when she
+gets home! Faith, I’d like to be there when his ears are boxed.
+
+Your letter speaks of no good spirit, my boy, and I’m not wondering at
+it. But you’ll be good enough to believe this--that if any harm had
+happened to Mimi, your wife, the news of it would have come home to
+you before this time. She’s well, and she’s kept away from you by some
+villain or the other who would profit by her story later on. That’s my
+certain belief, and nothing will shake it. A girl as clever as Mimi
+the Simpleton is not going to stay in any cage while her wit can
+squeeze through the bars thereof; and we’ll be hearing from her, with
+any luck, before the year is very much older.
+
+So I say to you, cheer up. Hope’s a good friend, even if he does treat
+us uncivilly sometimes. Many the time, after taking ten in a bunker,
+have I forsworn the pastime of golf, and resolved, by my father’s
+name, to take to hoeing turnips. But here I am, at a sixteen handicap
+still, and willing to back my luck against the company should occasion
+offer.
+
+I would tell you that we put the advertisement offering your thousand
+pounds for news of Mimi in all the papers, and have had perhaps a
+thousand answers. This London is a funny place, and as many rogues as
+fools in it. Sometimes I think that half the world’s gone mad. Is our
+dear little girl a wild animal that people should be writing to you as
+they are writing? Every crank with a bee in his bonnet, every
+wide-eyed lunatic who thinks his sister passed somebody like Mimi in
+the streets is spoiling good paper and pestering us. And then the
+newspapers themselves, still at it with their theories, and the great
+doctors of learning, and the scholars from the colleges, and the
+lunatics that have escaped out of Bedlam, all large in print with
+their stories of what happened, and their advice gratis to the rest of
+the company. ’Tis a very pandemonium of suggestion, and not one idea
+worth a silver threepenny among the whole of them.
+
+Meanwhile, Harry, my boy, will you be letting Paddy O’Connell know
+what he can do for you? ’Tis no pleasant holiday-time--ten days for
+eleven guineas--that I’m spending in these parts.
+
+Picture your friend walking on the lonely heath, and hunted about by
+vulgar men in buttons if he so much as drives a golf ball into a
+perambulator. This is my occupation--and when I’m tired of it, there
+are the horse-riders to be seen on the tan, and the motor-cars, which
+the police are fining.
+
+As for the horsemen, we’ve no such riding in Ireland, and wonderful it
+is to see, especially the elderly gentlemen on the six-and-sixpenny
+nags, who take a little horse exercise for the liver’s sake. One of
+them fell off by the pond yesterday, and I caught his steeplechaser
+for him. Such a sorry nag never came out of a knacker’s yard in
+Ireland; but the man himself was shivering like a half-drowned dog
+when he came up, and sovereigns would not have persuaded him to mount
+again.
+
+“Did ye see that?” he asks me; “did ye see him buck?”
+
+“Why,” says I, “not exactly. But if you’ll get up and make him do it
+again, I’ll tell you what it is.”
+
+He was very angry at this, and wouldn’t hear of it.
+
+“I’m not a jockey,” says he. “Do you suppose I’m going to ride a
+buck-jumper? Wait till I get back--I’ll tell Boulder what I think of
+him!”
+
+“Just clap your hands,” says I to this, “and the old horse will run
+home by himself. ’Tis a fine afternoon for walking, and good for the
+spirits. I would be taking the second hour first next time you go out.
+’Tis cheaper in the long run.”
+
+You can see any amount of these fellows on this “blasted heath,”
+Harry, but not much else that I know of. And I am staying here because
+my old friend asked that same of me; and, if he wishes it, I’ll remain
+until they wake me and afterwards. As for the little house, the
+curious folk still come to stare at the place, and Sunday finds them
+loafing about half the day, just as though there were to be another
+bad business for their amusement, and a wrong done to them should it
+not happen. Yesterday one of them pushed his nose so far into the
+garden that for a halfpenny I would have punched it.
+
+He turned out to be a French waiter from a little hotel in Soho, and
+had much intelligence of his own; so I fell to some agreeable talk
+with him, and was much struck with his remark that the real way to get
+at the truth would be by offering money to one of the gang to turn
+King’s evidence. To be sure, we’d have to learn the name of the fellow
+first--but that’s to be done, I am persuaded--and if you would hear
+the Frenchmen for yourself write to Monsieur Jean Rabasseur at the
+Café Bousson, Soho. A man of some intellect who might be useful to
+us.
+
+Meanwhile, for the sake of all that’s charitable, either summon me to
+Paris or send me back to Ireland. Your letters speak of a poor spirit;
+and if there is one man in this land of Sassenachs who could cheer you
+up, ’tis that same rogue Paddy O’Connell. So send for me and have done
+with it. Martha leaves London to-morrow, and then I’ll be lonely
+indeed. “I must go back to my dear husband,” says she; and when I
+offered to send for him to London, ’twas just “Heaven forbid, Mr.
+O’Connell! would you spoil my holiday?”
+
+So you see, women are much the same all the world over; and, if ever I
+would marry a wife, I’ll look her up and down first, and ask myself
+some questions. Is she the kind to go in double harness, and how will
+she run without blinkers? Is it my money she’s after, or the beautiful
+face I see in the glass? Be sure, I’ll be hard to convince. ’Tis
+rarely a husband’s face the women see in that same mirror; and lucky
+for the husbands that they have no gift of second sight--all of which
+goes to the making of that incurable old bachelor--Your friend,
+
+                                                               Paddy.
+
+P.S.--There was a letter came to-day from the office of the “Daily
+Bulletin.” I’m sending it on. You’ll see it’s marked “urgent,” so
+don’t answer it until you get it. Meanwhile, the others are going to
+the waste-paper basket, especially the bills, which have an ugly look,
+and should not be left lying about any house to annoy a man.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+ [In which we hear of Henry Gastonard at the Pavilion Henry Quatre in
+ the town of St. Germain by Paris.]
+
+                         Pavilion Henry Quatre, St Germain, By Paris,
+                                                  November 5th, 1905.
+
+Dear Paddy,--I have very great news for you, and I hardly know how to
+tell it. This must be the excuse for my silence these many days. Oh,
+my dear old chap, if you knew what it all meant to me! But I will try
+to tell you soberly, though God knows how much my impatience tempts me
+to heroics.
+
+You have been to St. Germain in my motor, and will not have forgotten
+it. Don’t you remember that great forest plateau above the river; how
+the old car groaned to climb the height, and what a lovely view we had
+from the very terrace before the windows?
+
+That was in the “witching month of summer.” I remember that we set out
+after a dinner at Bernotti’s, which you thought execrable, and a
+supper, _chez Maxim_, which won upon your fancy. We were a _partie
+carrée_ in the car, and you were not a little alarmed lest news of
+the escapade, and of two young and amiable ladies from the Chatelet
+should ever reach the secluded shades of Glendalough.
+
+Those, my dear Paddy, were the roses of yesteryear. We gathered them
+upon the velvet sward of youth, the vine leaves in our hair, and the
+garlands of eternal hope about our brows. You, I remember, were all
+for a fortune your uncle was about to leave you, and a chateau at
+Bougival--I for a gold medal at the salon and a niche in the eternal
+temple. Let us draw the veil upon such a treacherous jade. Did not old
+John O’Connell leave every shilling to the priests--bad cess to him,
+and is not the very bust I then worked upon become a corner-stone in
+the house of my abasement?
+
+I am once again at St. Germain, Paddy, and the changed season of the
+year speaks eloquently for me. What a rare day of autumn, what a
+chill, bleak night, with a voice to whisper of winter! Here is the
+very same terrace, magnificent as of yore--that terrace upon a
+glorious height wherefrom you look down to the valley of the shining
+river, away across the desolate plain of poplars, whereupon humanity
+plays its Lilliputian _rôle_ upon a mighty field, and beyond which
+Paris herself is but a blur upon a far horizon. But it is a silent
+terrace, Paddy, and the “monde” has deserted it. No gay music of
+fiddles now; no majesty of womanhood; no rustling silks and floating
+chiffon, and “Monsieur” to glance to the right of him and to the left
+of him ere sitting at the table of his guilt. Even the “teuf teuf” is
+silent, and the very stables cry desolation to you. The sun gave and
+the sun has taken away; and for want of that little sunbeam the
+chiffoned elves are hidden, and the world of laughter has fled the
+woods.
+
+But I hear you resenting this philosophy and asking for the news. Let
+an excuse of prolixity be that of the day and of the hour. It is
+Sunday, and but two parties at this famous house. I linger here
+because the events of these latter days forbid me to tear myself away.
+Would you have it otherwise as the circumstances go? Was it not on
+Friday that Jules Farman came to me, whispered a word in my ear that
+quickened my pulse as wine, and even hinted that the end was near? A
+more reticent man does not exist--there is no greater pessimist in all
+the service. And _he_ came to me and told me--_he_ permitted me to
+hope--_he_ encouraged me to believe the best. Do you wonder that I
+behaved like a fool for three good hours, and did not cease so to
+behave until he threatened to leave me behind and to do the work--if
+work were to be done--himself?
+
+There are some private affairs, Paddy, which are better for the wisdom
+of an old friend’s tongue--and this is one of them. I was in a poor
+way when Farman came to me and had begun to say that the Marquis de
+Saint Faur would never reveal what he knew of the Count d’Antoine’s
+visit to London. More than that, I imagined that the purpose of the
+visit could throw no light upon its dreadful sequel. Here was a French
+gentleman, of the older fashion, who told me plainly that he kept a
+secret from me, but begged me to believe that his reticence was both
+wise and honourable. And I must believe him; I must carry the
+assurance that he knew, and that his knowledge must be hidden from me.
+
+A torture truly--for what burden is so heavy to a man in doubt as the
+silence of another who could speak? I perceived that the Marquis would
+never speak; and, driven to the belief that my little wife had not
+left England at all, was upon the point of keeping my promise to you
+when Farman came with his amazing story, and all the castles of
+despair were demolished in an instant.
+
+This was at five o’clock of the afternoon of Friday. There had been a
+day of wonderful sunshine for the month of November, and many people
+in the streets. I lunched with that pleasant fellow, the Chevalier
+Honoré de Villefort, at the Madrid, and went with him afterwards to
+the house of the famous painter, Delmormet, who has a studio for
+portraits in the Avenue de Malakoff. A promise to Villefort that we
+would go up to the Butte together to dine, and then make a tour of the
+old cafés, was not fulfilled, for I had no sooner come in sight of
+the Hôtel St. Paul than I remarked a large motor-car standing at the
+door, and leaped to the conclusion that it had come for me. In this I
+was not mistaken. Jules Farman himself waited in my room, and
+instantly informed me of the truth.
+
+“Madame Gastonard is at Bougival--in an old house near the river,” he
+said.
+
+I looked at him, but did not answer. The room and all things in it
+were spinning before me as a gyroscope. The temptation to laugh was
+almost uncontrollable.
+
+“What do you say, Farman?”
+
+“That Madame Gastonard is at Bougival, and that we must go there
+immediately.”
+
+I walked across to the buffet and filled a wineglass with brandy. It
+was odd to hear my own heart beating, odd to be lifted in an instant,
+as it were, upon the wings of light to a very heaven of gratitude and
+thanksgiving--and yet my prudence saved me. Doubt whispered loudly in
+my ear. I could laugh for excitement and yet curse the fate which made
+me doubt. Even Jules Farman was powerless against that native caution
+which has saved me so many days.
+
+“Why do you believe this, Farman?”
+
+“Monsieur,” he said very simply, “the man Jean-le-Mont has told us
+something.”
+
+“He has told you something--yes--but what? Speak, man, for God’s sake!
+Is your heart of marble that you play with me like this?”
+
+He seemed astonished. He is officialdom personified. What are men and
+women to him but names to be docketed, identities to be established,
+the persons of the drama which can move him to no excitements.
+
+“It is a long story,” he said next, “and we have little time. If you
+are ready, we will go to Bougival.”
+
+I did not answer him immediately. The voice of prudence cried to me to
+make haste. Good God, that I should delay, I who would have gone
+through fire and water for Mimi’s sake! And he reproached me, this
+smooth-faced servant of bureaucracy who had done his work so well.
+
+“I am ready, Farman--let us go,” I said--for he delayed now.
+
+He pointed to my thin overcoat.
+
+“Not without our furs, monsieur; the night will be cold.”
+
+The rebuke was just, and I perceived that he was heavily clad, though
+in other respects the same reticent, unobtrusive creature we have
+always known. When all was ready, he gave a direction to the driver to
+go to Asnières--a suburb to the northwest of Paris--and taking his
+seat beside me in the tonneau, we made the journey without a single
+word spoken between us.
+
+And what could I say to him? What treasure of my inmost thoughts
+should I lay bare at such an hour? My love? Impossible to speak of
+that. My gratitude? He was well aware of it. The doubts lingering, the
+spectres of incredulity? They sat by his side too, for his very
+reservations betrayed him. Enough for me to say, Mimi is at Bougival;
+I am going to her; I shall find her to-night; to-morrow she will awake
+upon my heart. Were we not flying towards her?--streets and boulevards
+devoured us with an appetite of distance insatiable; houses and shops,
+cafés and restaurants--so many stars of light to guide us; intervals
+of blackness; bridges above and rivers below; trains crashing upon
+iron girders; trams humming toward the city--all the panorama of the
+flight as though shown upon a cloth. And afterwards the open country.
+Streets emaciated; factories at intervals; red blasts of light against
+a black sky; the fresher air of fields and parks; and beyond all, one
+clear star upon an imagined horizon--the star of our faith and
+purpose.
+
+I have never been more grateful to a motor-car in my life, and may
+never be as grateful again. Here was a machine of steel whose soul
+sent out a sympathetic message to my own. “I know, know, know,” the
+voice of it seemed to say. A horse bending to the whip could not have
+answered more readily to the fevered cries of a despairing master. We
+covered the ground as upon some magic carpet stretched out at my
+desire. When the flight ended, when the voice from the heart of steel
+was no longer heard, I noticed that we stood before a little café in
+the narrow street of an inconsiderable town. And I was as one awakened
+from a nightmare of sleep. Was she here; was this the house? The omens
+said, no. I glanced at the café and perceived two old friends
+standing at its doorway. They were the mendicant Georges Oleander and
+the merry Chevalier Honoré de Villefort--whom I had but just left in
+Paris.
+
+“We are here to dine with the Chevalier,” Farman whispered to me as we
+descended; “please to remember that. We are returning at eleven
+o’clock. I wish no other suggestion to be made. It is very important.”
+
+I nodded my head to him, and we entered the house together. A zeal,
+burning to a point almost beyond endurance, bade me welcome this
+respite, as a man may welcome an inn upon a journey to the house of
+his pleasures. The café, I observed, was one frequented by the
+students; a shabby little place, with a damp, stained frieze of faded
+gilt to speak of ancient glories. The occupants of it were a dozen
+students, poets, painters, and the riff-raff of the schools. Dinner
+had been set for us in a mock _cabinet particulier_--but a sorry
+imitation of the genuine article. Here, anon, we were joined by
+Desmond Barrymore, and immediately he had entered, the _patron_
+himself served up the first course of a dinner whose menu might have
+been in Chinese, for all I remember of it.
+
+Imagine my feelings, Paddy, as I sat at this rude table with the old
+friends who have fought so many battles--and cracked so many
+bottles--of Bohemia in my company. Not many months ago, Barrymore and
+I were fighting for little Mimi’s very life in the Lapin Agil on the
+Butte. I left Paris, and he came across the sea to witness my
+marriage. Again a few weeks roll on, and he is here as a silent
+witness of my despair. The others, good fellows that they were, could
+but act a mean part on such a night. Ah, for the old times when no man
+cared a sou for the morrow, and sufficient for the day was the evening
+thereof. This thought tempted me sometimes. We may well dread a gift
+of happiness, for shall there not be an aftermath of sorrow, whatever
+our fortune?
+
+It was not hidden from me that Jules Farman had called upon these good
+comrades of mine to share his confidence. They were excited, but not
+eloquent. Recalling old days of the games, I found them in that mood
+which overtakes a man when he is about to run or row a race, and
+believes that he will win it. They talked at rare intervals, drank
+much wine, evaded my questions, and rarely looked me in the face.
+
+When dinner was over, we went into the outer room and joined the
+Bohemians there. This I understood to be part of the stratagem, and I
+made no comment upon it; and, for that matter, the scene was droll
+enough. The artist--especially the French artist--in Suburbia is a
+wild creature, as you know well; nor were these men exceptions. We
+discovered them in all attitudes, some sprawling at the tables, some
+billing and cooing in far secluded corners. The man at the piano had a
+girl upon his knees, and cuddled her while he played. The shadowgraph
+which they acted presently would have brought the police into any
+establishment in London. But here it seemed innocent enough. After
+all, the spirit of the play goes for much.
+
+Depict a far from clean sheet drawn across one end of this mean room,
+and a shadow-play cast upon it. There is a sick man shown, and he is
+_in extremis_. Appear a doctor, who pulls out the fellow’s tongue with
+a pair of pliers, and rams it in again with a motor tyre lever.
+Medicine is administered to the moribund creature as a horse is
+drenched with drugs. The relatives gather round the bed, and begin to
+divide up the man’s property between them. But they are reckoning
+without their host. The wonderful drug acts upon the sick man with
+amazing and miraculous results. He sits up in bed, waves the throng
+off, spurns his wife aside, leaps from his couch, and embraces the
+pretty nurse ecstatically. This is the whole cure; and those who were
+the spectators have now become the imitators, inspired by the _mens
+sana_. The artists embrace all the pretty girls near them. Somebody
+puts out the electric light, and in the darkness we hear squeals and
+giggles. Thus genius amuses itself--thus, the story of the youth of
+to-day, whom Fame will acclaim at maturity to-morrow.
+
+Just as a man upon his way to a _rendezvous_, where the opportunity of
+a lifetime awaits him, may be amused by the _gamins_ of the pavement,
+so did this absurdity of the café engross me. It was something to
+lean back in my chair and to tell myself that I was a prisoner there
+for Mimi’s sake. Later on, when the appointed hour came, I would go to
+her and tell her how I had waited. And prudence said that Jules Farman
+delayed because our very success depended on his cleverness.
+
+Strangers at the café--would not that rumour be bruited abroad
+quickly enough. I imagined also that he waited for some man to come or
+go, was watching patiently as we sat, and numbering the very minutes
+as the old wooden clock above the doorway numbered them. Nor in this
+was I mistaken. At eleven o’clock precisely he rose, and we followed
+him from the place without a word. The great car stood already at the
+door; we entered it, and were whirled away as it might seem toward
+Paris, but in reality toward St. Germain and the chateau of Bougival
+below the heights.
+
+Now, this was not a long journey, but to my impatience nigh
+intolerable. I knew nothing of the road we followed; the night was so
+black that the sharpest eyes could make little either of the route or
+its environment. I can only tell you that we perceived the lights of
+St. Germain at last, and had no sooner set our course toward them than
+we turned from the high road and entered upon a narrow track which was
+little better than a waggon-way. This we followed, perhaps for the
+half of a mile, then the River Seine came to our view, and at the same
+moment the car stopped, and I knew that this was our destination.
+
+There is no moon before midnight this month, and we had fallen upon a
+black, dark night. My busy eyes could follow the silver shimmer upon
+the still water of the river, but little else of the scene about. It
+is true that a glint of light at the far side of a meadow seemed to
+tell of a house there, though of what nature I could not hazard.
+Farman himself carried many anxieties, and he entered the wood at the
+roadside, and remained there some minutes alone before we had his
+confidence. When he returned, he gathered us about him, and began to
+speak in a low voice.
+
+“Madame Gastonard,” he said, “has been in that house for three days.
+She was taken there by a man named Bedotte and the old woman Marie
+from Orleans. I have reason to believe that both of them are in the
+house to-night. The others were the man Jean-le-Mont and the showman
+Gondré. The former is now in our pay, and the latter has been
+arrested at Asnières to-night. We shall find the man Bedotte
+dangerous, but I do not think he will trouble us very much. If there
+should be others with him, whose names I do not know, I may have to
+ask you gentlemen to give me some help. Be pleased to take these--and
+to use them if I bid you.”
+
+He went to the car, and produced three revolvers from it. Old Georges
+Oleander’s protest that he was more likely to shoot one of us than any
+other caused a smile even at such a time. But we gave him a heavy
+knobbed stick in place of the pistol, and so set out in single file
+across a marshy meadow toward the house. My own place was upon
+Farman’s heels, and I would have given much for another word with him.
+But he walked fast and resolutely, and did not stop until a hound
+began to bay and another to answer from a house upon the further side
+of the river. Then he stopped and listened.
+
+“I had not thought of a dog,” he said quietly; “we must remember him,
+gentlemen.”
+
+The Chevalier assented with a jest, Georges Oleander, I thought, a
+little dolefully. As for me, I did not lift my eyes from the lamp
+which shone across the fields as an omen of salvation. Mimi was there,
+harboured in that mean house. Men so vile that no man could name them
+truly were her jailors, and she stood alone among them. Incredible!
+and this was Farman’s story--the word of a man who had never lied to
+me. Oh, think of it all, Paddy, and try to follow my footsteps toward
+the house. Be patient if the record is not to be set down without
+emotion.
+
+I had supposed that we should approach the place covertly and a
+tip-toe. Such, however, was not to the mind of this amazing Jules
+Farman. He crossed the meadow as bold as any pedestrian out for the
+air on the Champs Elysées, and with less concern. As the villa took
+shape against the curtain of the sky, I made it out to be little more
+than a modern cottage set in a narrow garden which sloped toward the
+river. There was no other house in sight, nor any outstanding object
+to relieve the sense of isolation and security. But the river at the
+back was plainly in our favour, and I judged that the common at the
+front could conceal no sentinel. So perhaps I began to understand why
+Farman went so resolutely, and did not halt until we were but fifty
+paces from the door.
+
+“Monsieur Gastonard,” he said quietly, “you will please to use force
+should the occasion arise. I am hoping that it will not arise, and
+that our visit to the café will have been useful to us. If you
+please, gentlemen.”
+
+He waited for them to go on, smiling, I thought, for a brief instant
+at old Oleander’s hesitation. When they had opened the garden
+gate--whereby they paused a little while--the hound ceased to bay, and
+as hounds will, at a resolute approach, began to fawn upon them. They
+were lost to our view, and with no further delay, Farman walked toward
+the villa and knocked three times upon its door.
+
+It would be impossible, Paddy, to tell you of my own sensations during
+these instants of waiting. Depict me standing in the miserable patch
+of formal garden, at the door of a paltry red brick villa, listening,
+as I have never listened in all my life, trembling, I do believe, in
+the very excitement of my hope. More than once the temptation to cry
+out almost overpowered me. I must tell her that I had come--must let
+Mimi know that I waited for her. I could have beaten down twenty doors
+in my rage against delay, smashed the glass of the window to atoms,
+and razed the very building to the ground. Upon the other side was
+this imperturbable Farman, as quiet, as cat-like as ever, listening
+with bent ear, betraying no emotion; seemingly convinced already of
+his success. And I must obey him faithfully, wait as he waited, crush
+my impatience in hands of iron. Oh, I say, it was intolerable, and yet
+it was the truth!
+
+No one answered to our bold knock; the silence became almost
+insupportable. A minute we waited, two minutes, and still there was no
+sound but that of our own quick breathing. As for the lamp which
+burned so brightly, we could see it plainly, standing upon the table
+of the front room and the single ornament of that bare apartment. For
+the rest, there was no carpet on the floor, no ornament, no
+picture--but just the room itself and the bare wooden table and the
+lamp standing upon it. This we might have looked for, but not for the
+mystery of the silence, the absolute stillness which met us--so that
+one could have heard a watch ticking in the hand. Were the men warned,
+then? Had they fled the place? My heart sank low at the thought--and
+yet it was a thought that crept upon me.
+
+I had spoken no word to Farman since we entered the garden of the
+house, but this new turn was not to be borne, and I could suffer it no
+longer. A hurried whisper asked him what he made of it--and, a little
+to my surprise, he answered me aloud.
+
+“They are asleep,” he said quietly; “we must wake them”--and he
+knocked so loudly that the hound began to bay again, and I could hear
+the voice of Oleander cursing him. Plainly, we had no further need of
+concealment.
+
+“Who is asleep?” I asked a little brutally. “Did you not tell me that
+Madame Gastonard was here?”
+
+“I believed so,” he answered as quietly.
+
+“You believed so--well?”
+
+“I shall tell you presently.”
+
+His answer told me that he, with all his discernment, could make
+little of the situation. My own advice had been to force the window of
+the room, and this he now proceeded to do--but first he lighted a
+little lantern and laid his pistol on the sill. A disingenuous catch
+gave way at the first attempt, and we climbed through immediately, and
+went straight toward the inner door. Here for an instant Farman stood
+irresolute.
+
+“There may be some danger,” he said--and then he asked me--“are you
+quite prepared?”
+
+I whispered that I was, and he flung the door wide open, searching the
+hall beyond with the faint rays from a policeman’s lantern. There were
+signs of habitation here such as we might have expected--a felt hat
+upon a cane-seated chair, a basket such as women take to market, a
+stick so heavy that it was almost a bludgeon, an old mackintosh
+hanging upon a nail driven into the wall. The floor was uncarpeted and
+showed mud from clumsy boots--at the far end the door of the kitchen
+stood open, and a flicker of firelight from the grate still flashed
+upon its plastered walls. Thither now we went cautiously. But the
+place was tenantless--though a kettle still sang upon the hob and some
+dishes stood unwashed upon the table.
+
+I often think, Paddy, that nothing is so sure a test of a man’s nerves
+as a house of unknown perils, which we must search room by room. I am
+afraid of little in this world. It is no mere boast--for these things
+are purely physical--but I possess some presence of mind beyond
+ordinary, and a contempt for many of the situations of danger which
+tradition has glorified. And yet I swear to you, the sweat ran down my
+face like rain while I stood by Farman’s side in that shabby kitchen
+and asked him, what next?
+
+No longer did I believe that Mimi was here--and yet I was forbidden to
+say that she was not here. The evidence of recent occupation, the
+shreds of coarse food, the empty bottles lying pell-mell in the
+scullery, a woman’s tattered bonnet flung to a corner, a little jug of
+milk set apart with a few dry biscuits--these were the witnesses to
+Farman’s good faith and witnesses no logic could shake.
+
+As he had spoken, so the truth--that my dear wife had been the captive
+of these ruffians in this very house, that she might even be a captive
+still or worse than a captive. For now I shall tell you that an
+overmastering fear of the worst took possession of me and would not be
+quieted. I cared nothing for the men or the danger of their presence.
+Every step, long dragged out and heavy, was as a step toward a
+dreadful secret. The upper stories of the house became in an instant
+the chambers of the terrible truth. And above all was the torture of
+the thought that we had come too late, and but for those useless hours
+at St. Germain might have saved her. This latter brought me to the
+nadir of despair. Even Farman took pity upon me.
+
+“I begin to think that Madame is not here,” he said quietly. “Let us
+go upstairs--we shall not be long in doubt.”
+
+I looked him full in the face, and did not spare him the question.
+
+“Is she alive, Farman?”
+
+“Why should they kill her? The blackmailer never kills--he has not the
+courage.”
+
+I could but shrug my shoulders.
+
+“Then their object has been blackmail?”
+
+“It could be nothing else, Monsieur.”
+
+I admitted his reasoning, but it did little to console me. If there
+were peril of our proceeding this must be the moment of it. For we had
+to climb the narrow stairway, ignorant of those who were above, and
+powerless to shield ourselves from their attack.
+
+How it came that I was up on the first floor before Jules Farman I am
+not able to tell you. I remember only that I stood on a dark landing
+listening to my own heavy breathing, and unable to distinguish other
+sounds. What light there was came astreak through a narrow window high
+above us. I could make out the shapes of doors, but they were shut and
+meaningless. The floor was but a black patch until a warm ray of light
+shone down upon it from my companion’s lantern and instantly declared
+its secret.
+
+An old woman lay there--a shrivelled, white-faced hag of a woman,
+whose clothes were little more than a bundle of rags, whose hand still
+clutched the heavy stick with which, perchance, she had been struck
+down. And this Jezebel had gone to her account. The mask of death is
+sometimes unmistakable. It was unmistakable on Friday night when I
+came face to face with the old woman, Marie of Orleans, upon the
+landing of the house at Bougival.
+
+I say that it was a dreadful discovery, and yet, God knows, my
+thoughts in the instant of it were less of this stricken huddled body
+upon the floor than of the events which had preceded the murder. There
+is always awe of death, Paddy, however humble the subject, however
+callous the discoverer. And at the dark of the night in a lonely house
+with mystery whispering all about, the awe is manifold. Here we were,
+stooping to put our hands upon the dead woman’s heart, listening as we
+did so for any sounds from the secret rooms, and yet, perchance
+thinking of our own safety all the while. Who had been the instruments
+of our vengeance upon this mumbling hag? Must we unearth them
+presently, strike them down as they had struck her, spend the precious
+hours in such a butcher’s task?
+
+For my part, I thought that any instant might bring the ruffians upon
+us. It was a trial intolerable to watch the closed doors and wait for
+them to open. Why did the men delay? And Mimi--my God, why was she
+silent? Then a better instinct began to say that she was not here, and
+this gave me courage. Let me know the fact for a truth, and I cared
+not how many villains were harboured here.
+
+We opened the doors one by one, Farman carrying his lantern. I had a
+revolver at the cock. But I shall tell you at once that we discovered
+nothing. There were beds in two of the rooms, and a third had a paltry
+_ameublement_ which spoke of a gentler occupation. But in the main the
+house remained the same hard and chilling villa that we had imagined
+it to be--and I vow that there was something beyond all words
+melancholy in that secret which lay at the heart of it. An empty,
+barren house and a dead woman’s body upon the stairs. So much for
+Bougival--so much for all our plotting and our planning and our bold
+emprise.
+
+The men who had done this thing had been warned. They had fled the
+neighbourhood, cheated us, and perchance the police. Even Farman
+admitted as much when he called us together and deigned, for the first
+time, to share a confidence.
+
+“Gentlemen,” he said, “I cannot blame myself. The man Bedotte was here
+an hour ago--I knew that Madame Gastonard was here at sunset. You see
+what has happened--there has been a quarrel, and this woman has been
+killed. I would have come to Bougival sooner if it had been safe to
+come--but I was afraid for Madame Gastonard while the showman Gondré
+was here. We set a trap for him and he has been taken at Asnières
+to-night. The other man, Bedotte, has not been sober for many days.
+That is why I came to the house as I did; but, believe me, if what I
+surmise be true, nothing has been lost by delay, and we shall have
+good news of Madame to-morrow. I am now to leave the police to do
+their own business here and to advise Monsieur Lepine of ours. We may
+return immediately to Paris, for our work is done.”
+
+And so, Paddy, we left this melancholy house and returned to the car.
+I can still see the villa, the lamp shining from the lonely room, and
+the river bathed in moonlight--for the moon was up by this time and
+all the scene made glorious. It was something, at least, to know that
+my beloved wife had escaped that mean temple of death, perchance had
+known nothing of its secrets. None the less, I clung to the
+neighbourhood as to some place which should minister to my sentiment,
+and, determining to stay the night at St. Germain, returned thither
+with my companions. They, be sure, were not the men to decline such
+hospitality, and they sat up with me until dawn, offering a thousand
+explanations of Farman’s conduct, and justifying it in no way.
+
+What was this man keeping back from us? Why did he, who had served me
+so faithfully many a day, serve me so ill to-night? Recollect that I
+had but the shabbiest of facts from him. He had told me merely that my
+wife had been abducted from her house by those who had known her as
+Mimi La Godiche at Montmartre, and who believed that they could profit
+by the knowledge. And upon this a talk of blackmail--yet not a word
+that would enlighten me, no names, no histories--nothing but the
+intimation. This we said again and again as we sat in my room at the
+Pavilion Hotel and waited for the day. Circumstance had deluded us. We
+could make nothing of it.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+I had nothing from Farman yesterday, but to-day there came a little
+note in which, evading other issues, he tells me that the man Bedotte
+has been traced to Rheims, and is evidently making for Brussels; but
+that the police are close upon his track, and an immediate arrest is
+expected. “As for Madame,” he says, “the opinion is growing that she
+escaped from the house and need no longer be sought among these
+people.” But of this he will write me further at a later hour.
+
+And so you see, Paddy, that I am tied to this hotel in as great a
+state of doubt and perplexity, of hope and longing, as ever mortal
+suffered. I know not what to decide, what to believe. Inconceivable,
+indeed, that Mimi should not have gone straight to Paris, if this tale
+of escape were true. A telegram assures me that nothing is known of
+her, either at the Hôtel St. Paul or at Montmartre; and had you in
+England any news, I doubt not it would have come to me before this.
+What, then, am I to say? That she has not wished to return to me? God
+forbid any such thought.
+
+I will send you another letter in the morning, as soon as the event
+permits. Should anything happen in London, let nothing delay a
+telegram. Of the trivial affairs, there is a request here from the
+editor of the “Daily Bulletin” that I will write a second letter for
+him. It would serve no purpose, and I have said so. His desire to see
+me privately dictates the wish that you shall be my ambassador. Quit
+the game of golf and the perambulators and spend a quiet hour in
+Fleet-street. The power of the press is a wonderful thing, I assure
+you, but the journalist at lunch by no means terrifying. Ask the good
+fellow to meet you at the Savoy, and I do not think the state of
+parties will forbid.
+
+How odd it seems to be writing like this. I feel it not at all. The
+shadows crowd upon me. If I could but say, Let there be light!
+
+                                                   Yours, dear Paddy,
+                                                     Henry Gastonard.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+ [The Reverend Arthur Warrington rebukes his wife, Martha Warrington,
+ upon a trivial account.]
+
+                                       The Red Farm, Baldon, Suffolk,
+                              Sunday within the Octave of All Saints.
+
+Dear Martha,--Your continued stay with my cousins at Cambridge does
+not seem a great compliment to your husband. John is a very estimable
+man, it is true; but I ask you if it is discreet or prudent that a
+clergyman’s wife should associate with one who is not ashamed to
+attend the horse races at Newmarket, and has declared from a public
+platform that the Anti-Field Sports’ League is a society of
+charlatans.
+
+I had expected you to return and tell me more of this dreadful affair
+in which our cousin Henry is implicated. Is it kind to protract my
+anxieties? If it indeed be true that his unhappy wife has fled, then I
+think that the future need give us little anxiety. I say, God forbid
+that any harm should have overtaken the poor creature; but the human
+destinies are not in our hands, and we must humbly bow to them. To-day
+I wrote to Mr. Frogg, suggesting that we had some right to an
+inventory of the property. The great house at Fawlands, now let to
+Lord Lesborough, contains priceless furniture bought by Henry’s
+father, my uncle, and of this a valuation should be made. It is
+possible that by judicious economy and some practice of
+self-denial--in which I shall invite your cordial help--we might be
+able to live there ourselves when the present tenancy is terminated.
+But I shall permit no worldly ambitions to hamper my sacred calling,
+and in this course I must be guided by the Bishop. There is a See to
+be founded presently at Bury St. Edmunds, and there should be four
+residentiary canonries as a minimum. Here your brother’s influence
+with the Lord Chancellor may help us, and I should not hesitate to
+give a series of dinners in London to promote so worthy an aim. After
+all, rich men owe something to society, to do their duty in that state
+into which they were born; and we should be strangely forgetful of our
+privileges if we were merely to husband this money which the Lord has
+put into our keeping.
+
+Would you not like to be a canon’s wife, Martha? Remember that a
+Deanery may lie beyond, or even a Bishopric. I will not permit myself
+to think of these things. To-morrow I should have an answer from Mr.
+Frogg, and also, I hope, a letter announcing your return. These
+sporting people, surely, are no fit companions for a clergyman’s wife!
+
+                                                Your devoted husband,
+                                                              Arthur.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+ [We hear of Paddy O’Connell in a letter to Martha Warrington at
+ Cambridge.]
+
+Dear Mrs. Warrington,--I am careful, you see, not to say “Martha,”
+lest this letter should fall into your husband’s hands--bad cess to
+him! and he be making a fool of himself, as you say that he would. So
+it shall just be “Mrs. Warrington,” though laughing up my sleeve I am
+all the time, and you the same, I do not doubt.
+
+Well, my dear, I am having the blazes of a time in this wilderness of
+a place, and all for my friend’s sake; though, God knows what use I am
+to him any more than the policeman at the corner, who has had many a
+good glass of my whisky, and would like many another. Harry says ’tis
+to Paris I am to go presently, though what for the old gentleman
+himself would be hard put to it to guess. The last news I have from
+him speaks of the dreadful things we read in the papers this morning.
+It would be clear that the little witch is gone from the people that
+have had charge of her, and that this wicked story of wrong and
+mystery is no clearer to us than ever it was. But so far as it goes,
+we must be content with it; for I would no more doubt her than I would
+doubt my sister Clara, and whatever she has done has been done for the
+best--of that I am sure.
+
+Did it never occur to you that this pretty child may have a history
+out of the ordinary? It has been in my mind since the first day of our
+meeting, and as more in my mind than ever to-day. Who was her father?
+but, more important to ask, what was her mother’s name? Did you never
+hear tell of the airs and graces of her, the pretty ways that were
+strange in a showman’s tent, and the dignity which no man ever
+humbled? We may have lost good manners in this twentieth century, Mrs.
+Warrington, but we haven’t lost the good sense which tells us whether
+our fathers were gentlemen or villains, and this is an instinct we’ll
+keep yet awhile.
+
+I say that Mimi Gastonard is the daughter neither of a showman nor a
+peasant, and if my surmise is not correct, put Paddy O’Connell down
+with the fools.
+
+To speak of things better understood, I don’t wonder to hear that you
+were annoyed about the horse-racing. ’Tis no consolation to have
+missed those same great races, the Cæsarewitch and Cambridgeshire,
+and you so near to the course. Your cousin John evidently knows a good
+thing, and his win upon the double event must have gladdened your
+heart. But I’m sorry to hear that he put but a sovereign apiece on for
+you, and he might well have made it a tenner. Man is a curious animal,
+and always niggardly about his own kills. I shall tell Mr. John that
+same if ever I meet him.
+
+Well, Martha, I miss the piquet we used to play on quiet afternoons,
+and that’s a certainty. This god-forsaken Hampstead puts pistols in my
+hands every evening, and takes them out again when the sun shines in
+the morning. Just to think that the riding has begun in Ireland, and
+me, Paddy O’Connell, doomed to a six-shilling hack and a gallop as far
+as your arms can reach. Yesterday, in Harry’s interest, I lunched with
+a newspaper man at the Savoy Hotel, and was much disappointed to find
+that he drank water. “’Tis a little gas one needs in politics,” says
+I, “and champagne’s the stuff;” but he would have none of it. I should
+tell you that he has big notions of Harry’s literary gifts, and wants
+some more letters out of him. I told him a story or two about the
+parish priest of Glendalough, who, when the Bishop told him that golf
+was sending men to the devil fast, replied that he wondered at it, for
+they did it mostly on sloe gin. After this, he asked me to write a
+series of papers on “a humorist in the mountains of Ireland.” But I
+declined immediately. “’Twould be over the heads of your people,” says
+I, “and that’s where all good Catholics should be in this life or the
+next.”
+
+I expect to go to Paris to-morrow or the day after, and will write you
+when I get there. There is a parcel of books at the house, sent to you
+by your husband; but you don’t seem to have opened them. Will I
+forward them on or give them to the heathen? Advise me by return.
+
+And with kind regards, please find me, yours, as per last,
+
+                                                     Paddy O’Connell.
+
+There was a curate man got hold of me in Hampstead, and took me to a
+Christian Endeavour meeting. He persuaded me to put on the boxing
+gloves, and one of his flock gave me a precious black eye. ’Twas a
+Christian endeavour surely, and cost me a bandage. So I’m only seeing
+half of this letter, which you can tell your husband if it should fall
+into his hands.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XL.
+
+ [A Brief Note from Jules Farman in Paris to Henry Gastonard at St.
+ Germain.]
+
+                                    4 (bis), Rue du Quatre Septembre,
+                                                  November 8th, 1905.
+
+Monsieur,--I am very well able to understand your displeasure, and
+regret that it should have been incurred. Permit me to assure you that
+I have not deserved it. The circumstances of this unhappy case concern
+so many others, there are so many threads to this tangled skein that I
+crave your indulgence if all does not march as you would wish it.
+
+You heard from me yesterday the welcome tidings both of Madame’s
+safety and of her content. When the moment comes--and it is hourly
+expected--I feel that you will be the first to acquit me of the
+deception which has been practised. Madame believes that you are on
+your way from England, and will arrive in Paris, it may be to-day, it
+may be to-morrow. When you are with her, I doubt not that you will
+readily understand both our desire for delay and her continued
+residence. This story, believe me, is put forward for the best of
+reasons--reasons, I repeat, which you cannot fail to approve.
+
+But something, Monsieur, may be told by me in the meanwhile, and that
+I do not hesitate to write. It is now clear that Madame Gastonard was
+placed as a child at the Convent of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart at
+Feonville, near Orleans. A childish frolic carried her from the
+gardens of the old house to the woods upon the road to Blois, where
+she fell into the evil hands of the murdered woman, Marie Bordon, and
+was by her sold to the travelling showman, Gondré. So, passed from
+hand to hand, she becomes the servant of these rogues, and is lucky to
+find a home at last with that honest man Cassadore. Her story until
+the moment of her entry into the Convent School will be told to you by
+others, I trust, before many days are passed.
+
+I have directed, Monsieur, that this message shall reach you at St.
+Germain, believing that your continued stay in that town is both wise
+and convenient. In the meantime, dear sir, be assured of the loyal
+service of,
+
+                                                        Your devoted,
+                                                  Jules Henry Farman.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XLI.
+
+ [In which Henry Gastonard receives a summons from the Marquis de Saint
+ Faur.]
+
+                                                 Château of Bougival,
+                                                  November 8th, 1905.
+
+Dear Mr. Gastonard,--The obligation of silence which recent events
+have imposed upon me is the more deserving of apology as it is the
+less possible of explanation.
+
+May I beg of you to believe that all which has been done, or
+contemplated, is such as would appeal to any man of honour, and
+particularly to one who has shown such gifts of prudence and
+self-restraint as you have done these latter days?
+
+The story of Madame Gastonard’s infancy is not one which may be
+written circumstantially even for you, Monsieur. But the pages which
+are missing will be supplied by your knowledge and experience of the
+world and of men, and will not be regretted because of that knowledge.
+Great names are implicated, and particularly the name of a noble
+woman, who has suffered much, and yet must suffer. I beg you, in the
+name of womanhood, to bear this fact in mind from the beginning.
+
+For the rest, I am content that your judgment shall decide what is to
+be told to the world and what concealed. The rest is your own--an
+inheritance of a destiny once decreed and irrevocable.
+
+Do me the honour, I beg of you, to come to the Château de Bougival
+without delay, there to hear from Madame Gastonard’s own lips both the
+story of these recent days as she alone may tell it, and that other
+story, which will be told for the first time to any man by, Yours,
+with cordial esteem,
+
+                                               Gaspard de Saint Faur.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XLII.
+
+ [Paddy O’Connell hears that he may leave London, and is invited to
+ take the first train to Paris.]
+
+                                     Château de Bougival, near Paris,
+                                                 November 15th, 1905.
+
+Dear Paddy,--Please to pack that monstrous bag of yours, and to come
+to us immediately. You will get a train from Paris to St. Germain, and
+I will send a motor there to meet you. But be sure to wire, for Mimi
+says you are more likely to send your telegram from this house than
+from London.
+
+Oh, Paddy, Paddy--what a day, what news, what happiness! I am here in
+this old château, and Mimi is at my feet while I write to you. We
+have before us the great park of Bougival; there is warm sunshine
+though the month is November; the trees are bare and leafless, but
+they show us the shining river, and it shall wing our message to the
+friends who love us. For thirty-six hours I have hardly let Mimi
+escape from my arms, but to-day she bids me write to you; and I obey,
+even as she who watches me with such a story of love and gratitude in
+her childish eyes.
+
+I have found her--the dreadful days will come no more; already we have
+learned to believe that yesterday was not, and that to-day is eternal.
+So much is to be told immediately; but of the rest your own perception
+shall tell you, and you alone, when you come to Bougival. And you will
+come without delay. Trains shall be too slow for you; the sea shall
+provoke you; the inventions of man imprison those kindly thoughts you
+would speed to us. As you stood beside us in the hour of darkness, so
+now will you stand with us in the light--the first and best and
+biggest-hearted of our friends. So I repeat, let nothing prevent you,
+but come, for we weary for you.
+
+It was on Wednesday afternoon that I received a letter from the
+Marquis de Saint Faur inviting me to this place. There was little in
+it that would interest you beyond the invitation which it contained,
+and you may imagine with what haste I set out at its commands. Oh, be
+sure, I had some dim perception of the truth, or I would not have been
+content to rest in that lonely hotel, as I did, and to suffer
+patiently the mysteries which crowded upon me. Mimi was well, I said,
+and had the best of reasons for her silence.
+
+To-day I know it was the truth. If you ever come to understand,
+Paddy--in which case you will be the one man in all Europe who will
+share the great truth with me--then your own shrewd common-sense will
+have written the story for you. My lips are sealed; I am content that
+they should be sealed. For is not Mimi at my feet while I write, and
+may not I stoop to kiss her rosy cheeks when I will?
+
+I set out for Bougival on Wednesday night, then, and in 20 minutes was
+at its gates. To my inquiry whether the Marquis owned the Château,
+the people about gave an evasive answer. Some seemed to think that he
+did; others spoke of a foreign tenancy, chiefly by that beautiful but
+notorious woman the Princess Hélène of Ilidze, and her cousin the
+Duchess de Bourg. Both these ladies had been with Saint Faur when I
+met him at the Ritz Hotel in Paris; and from all that gossip says, it
+was no surprise to me that one of them, at any rate, should be found
+at Bougival. But of this I had little time to speculate, for I set out
+for the Château within half an hour of receiving the Marquis’s
+letter, and was at the gates exactly at seven o’clock on Wednesday
+evening.
+
+I knew that it was seven o’clock, for bells chimed as my car raced up
+the long avenue from the lodge, and the great clock above the stables
+was still telling the hour when a butler opened the door to me and
+invited me within. That the servants expected me it was not possible
+to doubt. Neither my name nor my business was asked, but being
+conducted directly into the great hall of the château, footmen
+relieved me of my wraps and assured me that Monsieur le Marquis should
+at once be informed of my arrival. And so they left me in that stately
+place; and for the first time since the letter came to me, I could ask
+myself the meaning both of it and of this bewildering sequel.
+
+Imagine a vast apartment, Paddy, domed above and built almost entirely
+of marble. There were mosaics in gold for the frieze and paintings
+above, such paintings as Vernet made for the ceilings of the Louvre,
+but skilfully adapted to a vast and ornate concavity. A wide staircase
+glowing with a crimson carpet boasts five caryatides to bear its
+burdens. The chimney is a masterpiece by an unknown artist--a colossal
+structure protruding centaurs far into the room and pillared with
+jasper and chalcedony. Above there is a great picture of Turenne, the
+Turenne of the fables and the wars, mounted and riding as a
+Marshal-General of France. Other portraits also of soldiers adorn the
+place, but there is one of the Empress Josephine, painted, I imagine,
+during the stormy days of St. Cloud, and cleverly reflective of that
+turbulent time, which is a masterpiece beyond all question. As to the
+furniture, it is sparse but very beautiful. I note a clock with the
+Graces which could not be bettered at Fontainebleau. A massive bureau
+is in the finest style of that magnificent Boulle whom posterity has
+imitated and derided. A brief glance says that this apartment stands
+as an atrium to a house of princes. The manner of it, the size of it,
+that indefinable atmosphere which the ages create could never mislead.
+I am in the house of an aristocrat, and he has summoned me to find
+Mimi there.
+
+So much is plain from the beginning, but the event which carried my
+beloved wife to such a place, which sealed her lips while she resided
+there, and brings me to her as a very suppliant, is dwelt upon almost
+with reluctance, stands, it may be, almost as a shadow beyond. I seem
+to know, and yet I do not know. You, Paddy, with your powers of swift
+perception, will not fail to understand me. You will read already in
+this book of an amazing destiny.
+
+I say that they left me in this splendid hall, and that for many
+minutes I had no companion there. The house itself spoke both of
+occupation and of ceremony. I perceived footmen about the table in the
+dining-room, whose door opened to the right of the great fireplace
+where the logs blazed brightly. The landing above echoed the voices of
+maids, and, upon that, another voice which caused my heart to leap as
+though one had spoken to me from the grave. When a chime of bells
+echoed musically in the heights of the dome, I understood that they
+were ringing the dressing-bell, and remembered with some consternation
+that I had come to the château “as I was.” But the thought passed
+away as swiftly as car and train could carry me.
+
+If anything disturbed my serenity, it was the absence of the Marquis.
+He knew of my arrival, and should, I thought, have welcomed me the
+sooner. But the minutes passed, and still he did not come; and one by
+one the old phantoms swarmed up to torment me. If she were not here,
+after all! If a trick had been played me! Inconceivable, and yet how
+real to a man who had suffered so much.
+
+It was odd, Paddy, but all memory of the tragic days we have lived
+through passed utterly from my recollection in that house. No longer
+did I care what the world had said of Mimi or what it would say
+to-morrow. That awful night, when I stood upon the threshold of my
+little house to gape upon a dead man’s body and to know that my wife
+had left me; that had been wiped out of my calendar as though a hand
+of mercy reviewed the page. The house in which I stood, the great
+names I had heard, Mimi’s presence at the château--with what woeful
+reiteration did I not repeat the harassing questions to which I had no
+answer. She knew that I was here and yet she did not come to me! How
+my heart sank at that! What an abasement of love and faith--and how
+swift a repentance!
+
+She comes at last--I hear the patter of feet on the stairs above--so
+gentle that it might be the south wind brushing the cheeks of a rose.
+What a moment to live as I turn about to spy a sweet apparition on the
+stairs, to watch a girlish figure descend them one by one, to say that
+she is my Mimi, and yet to remain almost unbelieving. Stand so far
+with me, Paddy, but then shall you turn your eyes away. There are
+things said and done between two who love which are holy in their
+sanctity and God-given in their secrecy. Were it otherwise I could no
+more tell you what befell us in that instant of greeting than I could
+speak the dreams which the lightest hours of sleep have given me. Was
+it not enough that I caught her in my arms and that kisses forbade her
+to speak at all? Are there not hours of living so precious that they
+would remain heaven though it were hell afterwards to all eternity?
+And such an hour was that at the Château of Bougival--when Mimi ran
+down the great staircase to my embrace, and my lips sealed her sweet
+confession.
+
+You will remember that she wore a trim black dress when she was with
+us at Hampstead, made cleverly as the French make all these things;
+but a little overmuch in the fashion of the nunneries. I recollect
+that we chaffed her about it, and that the Chevalier would have gone
+out to get a Franciscan robe to match it; while old Georges Oleander
+was all for singing the office, especially that part of it which
+counsels the giving of alms to the needy.
+
+This dress and the pretty picture it enshrined have stood during all
+these weary days for my image of Mimi as I should find her at last and
+take her again to my house. But it was not to be. The Château of
+Bougival has dealt too well by its prisoner. No little girl of the
+atelier and the mountain descended that proud staircase to my embrace.
+In her place I found a stately figure of Paris, gowned and dining; a
+Mimi robed in silk and chiffon, with a gift of jewels about her white
+neck and a sparkle of diamonds upon her arms. Oh, and the grace and
+shyness of her, as though she were half afraid, but wholly sure of her
+reception! And here is the wonder. She spoke not at all of the things
+I had expected to hear from her lips. She told me nothing of the night
+of crime and flight; nothing of the days intervening; no story of her
+coming to this house--but happy in my arms she laughed at my
+perplexities and asked me if I would have her otherwise. And, Paddy, I
+knew not what to say to her. She is changed as it were in a twinkling.
+My quick perception could not put the fact aside. She has come into
+her inheritance--she is Mimi of the Butte no longer and never will be
+again.
+
+Let me try to tell you of the talk which passed between us as we stood
+together in the hall and cared less than nothing though all France had
+been listening. It will not be to write down the sighs and sounds of a
+lover’s meeting--you, Paddy, of all men care nothing for those since
+you met the widow at Ostend; but I would wish to tell you how cleverly
+this mere child kept, even from me, the things she had been charged to
+hold sacred, and how even my persistency could not shake her. And
+first, of our meeting in the house at all.
+
+“The Marquis sent for me, Mimi,” said I; “I looked to find him here.”
+
+“And you found me, Monsieur Henry----”
+
+“Monsieur Henry! Am I that to you, Mimi? Is it the Mimi of the Lapin
+Agil again? Let me look into your eyes--let me see why you are
+changed.”
+
+“I am not changed,” she rejoined very sweetly, “but I am very happy,
+_mon mari_.”
+
+“How long have you been in this house, Mimi?”
+
+She tried to think. An impaired memory is among the first fruits of
+all that has befallen her.
+
+“_Ah, mes enfants_, how long have I been here? There would be nights
+and days--long nights and days. Then Madame came and I was happy. She
+will tell you, Harry--she can remember how long I have been here.”
+
+“Did the Marquis bring you, then? Did he discover you at the villa?”
+
+She shuddered; a spasm of pain crossed her face. I regretted that I
+had spoken of such a place at all.
+
+“Bedotte went down to the river,” she said presently, her mind
+gathering the threads one by one, “I was alone and afraid. _Alors_,
+the woman Marie is there and I think of her. _Ah, mes enfants!_ She
+comes to my bedroom and begins to tell me the things I heard long ago,
+when I was a little child and ran away to the woods. I think she was
+_ivre, mon mari_--and I laughed at her. Then I saw that she was no
+longer the Madame Marie who had frightened me. She prayed and mumbled
+and wept. Oh, it was droll, for she seemed to think I was a baby again
+and would have sung me to the sleep. But I crept away, and then she
+told me to go. It was _mechante_ to hear that. ‘Go,’ she said, and she
+tumbled to the door and held it wide open--and the black house was
+there and the men to kill me. I was afraid to go, and I told her so,
+and then she wept again and sat by the fire rocking herself as a baby.
+I was frightened, _affreusement_, but I went to the top of the stairs
+and then a little way down them. Monsieur Bedotte had not returned, so
+I opened the door. And then I ran away from them--Jésu, how I ran!
+The woman called to me from the window, but still I ran, until I heard
+her scream, and then I could run no more. A long while afterwards I
+came to the river and the boat; and when I asked the boatman to take
+me to Paris he laughed. I should have been afraid of him also, _mon
+mari_, if there had not been someone else in the ship, a great big
+monsieur, big as Monsieur Paddy and as kind. He asked me why I wished
+to go to Paris, and I told him. He said he would take me there but
+that I must rest first. Then he brought me to this house and Monsieur
+the Marquis came to speak to me. He promised that he would write to
+you--and now you have come--_ah, mes enfants_, you have come and I am
+happy.”
+
+She spoke slowly, Paddy, and with less than a Frenchwoman’s
+volubility. Perceive that she had told me nothing of the house itself,
+of its master or its mistress. The dramatic story of her flight from
+the villa may have been her apology.
+
+Cannot you depict the scene--the rogue’s house standing apart in the
+meadow by the river--one blackguard summoned to Asnières by a trick
+and arrested there--another betraying the gang; a third leaving the
+old witch in charge and going, perchance to a cabaret to drink?
+
+He returns and finds the captive fled; in a savage outburst he strikes
+the old woman dead and leaves her body in the house. We arrive when
+all this has happened, but our knowledge of human nature is not deep
+enough to read the riddle aright. We do not say that even this hag may
+have known an instant’s humanity, though it were the humanity of the
+bottle. She moans and babbles and weeps--the motherhood of the dead
+past stirs again in her veins, warmed by absinthe or bad brandy--and
+she bids the child to go. Thus in a frenzy she invites the death which
+must await her. The man returns and attacks her brutally. He knows
+that the game is up, while we are but guessing at the nature of his
+pastime.
+
+This much was plain to me; but the sequel to the story I found as
+perplexing as ever. Nor had I any further opportunity at that moment
+to question the little girl who shrank in my embrace as though afraid
+of her own narration. For that matter the Marquis himself appeared
+now, and hastened to excuse himself. He was a fine figure of a man in
+his dinner dress, and so natural in his grand manner that none but a
+clown would have mocked it. Almost his first words informed me that he
+had sent a motor to St. Germain for my baggage and commanded me to
+sleep at the Chateau.
+
+“There will be much to speak of to-morrow,” he said, addressing both
+my little wife and myself; “for the moment it is sufficient to dine.
+Let Joseph show you to your room, Mr. Gastonard. I am sure you are
+very tired.”
+
+I did not demur, and finding my clothes already laid out for me, I
+dressed with what haste I could and descended to a little salon upon
+the first floor where they told me I should find the ladies. Mimi was
+here, and with her that remarkable woman the Princess Helene of Ilidze
+and her constant companion the Duchesse de Bourg. Even you know
+something of the adventurous life of the former. All the world
+followed her flight from the Austrian Court with the singer Monterez;
+her amazing escapades at Geneva have never been concealed; her
+subsequent appearance in Paris and friendship with the Marquis de
+Saint Faur have long ceased to amuse as gossip.
+
+An old story now, but unforgotten, Paddy. She preserves an ancient
+beauty with little art, I perceive. There is no finer intellect in all
+Europe, no woman possessing so many accomplishments with so little of
+mediocrity in their display. Her volume on the “Story of Hungary” is a
+classic. She has had an operetta done in Milan with sufficient
+critical abuse to ensure its success. Kindly tongues would give her
+forty-five years, I suppose. She might be anything from thirty-five to
+fifty; for she is one of those women who go arm in arm with Time and
+are careful not to quarrel with him.
+
+This was the lady who presided on Wednesday night at the dinner-table
+in the Château of Bougival. The little dark Duchesse, her companion,
+is but the setting to the jewel. I noticed that she ate and drank with
+much dispatch, as subservient people will--wreaking her silent
+vengeance upon the viands. The Princess herself talked incessantly,
+and chiefly to me. Her range of subjects was amazing. I laughed at the
+sketch of the typical Englishman, whose foot is on his native heath
+but whose heart is in the Jardin de Paris. The Emperor Franz Joseph is
+the greatest man in the world, she thinks, and Anatole France the next
+to him. Paris, she declares, is being spoiled by the Socialists. The
+new Frenchman is well represented by the ugly steam trams which
+disfigure his streets. Religion is fashionable only among monarchists,
+and will profit eventually by their conservative traditions. Sentiment
+is departing from France; it would be a good thing if a king were
+chosen and murdered--for that would revive sentiment. As for art, the
+moderns are getting as good as they deserve, and if they desire
+better, they should hang the picture-dealers. She herself has recently
+discovered Corfu and means to build a villa there. She declares it to
+be the finest climate in the world--and you can only play roulette
+when the sun is shining. All this, mind you, in a mood most frivolous;
+by no means embarrassed, casting sweet smiles about her, and stroking
+little Mimi’s hands from time to time as though a new pet had come
+into her house and must be made much of.
+
+Now, Paddy, I am but a narrator of facts as far as this letter
+goes--the thinking must be done by you. Why has this extraordinary
+woman kept Mimi in this house? And what is the meaning of such amity?
+I could but make a hazard at the dinner-table and less than a hazard
+afterwards. In truth we settled down to a formal evening, just as
+though Mimi and I had driven over from a neighbouring château and
+were to return presently. A game of billiards with the Marquis, a
+little gallantry played by the obliging Duchesse--and then to bed. And
+through it all my dear wife acting a part to perfection.
+
+I swear she was wonderful, Paddy--this flower of the fêtes, this
+child of the atelier playing the grand dame at the Château of
+Bougival as though born to it. If she tripped once or twice the
+stumbles were humorous enough, just a catchword from the Butte, a
+sudden jest--it may be an inelegant attitude. But in the main as
+little to be criticised as Madame the Princess herself--a woman who
+also has lived in the ateliers and is not entirely a stranger to the
+student’s quarters.
+
+I say that I watched the play amazed alike at Mimi’s part therein and
+understanding little until we were alone in our bedroom together. Then
+almost with dramatic suddenness the child’s courage left her. She fell
+into my arms in a passion of weeping--she whispered in my ear a truth
+that I had expected from the beginning. Pride in it, love, shame,--all
+were there. And I hushed her to sleep upon it, my beloved, who has
+come to me from the unknown but can speak to-day with other children
+of immortal memories and the golden days. Let this be her message to
+you, Paddy--and let this be my Good Night. Mimi is happy and knows the
+secrets of the years. Do you in your turn come to us as swiftly as may
+be. Have we not as much need of our friends in our joy as in our
+sorrow?
+
+And so I shall look for you by any--or as you would say, by every
+train. _Bis dat qui cito dat_--which is to say “Hasten.”
+
+                                                          Yours ever,
+                                                     Harry Gastonard.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XLIII.
+
+ [Martha Warrington, being returned to her home, receives there a
+ letter from the Château of Bougival.]
+
+                                                 Château de Bougival,
+                                                 November 19th, 1905.
+
+Dear Mrs. Warrington,--I have to tell you that I have left the
+horse-riders of Hampstead and am come to this house, which is a palace
+not far from Paris, and as comfortable quarters as Paddy O’Connell has
+’lighted upon these many days. Should you wish to write to me, address
+the letter as above, though you might put “care of the Marquis de
+Saint Faur,” who is one of my friends, and a very noble gentleman.
+
+Well, I arrived here after the blazes of a journey, and not knowing at
+all why Henry had sent for me. At first I thought it would be some
+news which he could not well put on paper, and after that I thought it
+wouldn’t. Bougival, I would tell you, is a stretch of park-land on the
+river near Paris, lying under the height of St. Germain, which you
+will have heard of in the French books your husband forbids you to
+read. The train took me to the station of the place, and a fine
+motor-car from there to the house; so, you see, I was made much of,
+and mighty pleased with myself when I set foot in what the French call
+“the vestibule.”
+
+’Tis true that the footmen--and the Marquis must have half a hundred
+of them in this place--speak the French tongue poorly, and that I had
+to fall back on my Sassenach; but we must allow something to
+ignorance, and that is as cheap an article in France as in England.
+Any way, I couldn’t be angry in so fine a house; and, being fortunate
+enough to arrive about half-past seven o’clock of the evening, they
+conducted me to a bedroom as big as a church, and sent as many men to
+wait upon me as though I had been an Emperor. This put Paddy in a
+dilemma, for, notwithstanding that his forefathers were kings in their
+own countries, he can’t suffer another man to put a shirt on his back,
+nor is he happy when a couple of flunkeys would see his head in the
+washtub.
+
+You must know that Harry wrote me a long letter inviting me to this
+house, and telling me nothing at all, except that his wife was here.
+I’d suspected it all along, though hearing the name of the place for
+the first time; and now, says I, the truth is coming out at last. ’Tis
+some great man or woman in Paris who has been after hunting the child,
+and that poor Count d’Antoine who was murdered at Hampstead was but
+his or her ambassador. I’d have been worse than a fool not to have
+guessed as much after receiving Harry’s letter and reading the
+papers--though God forbid I should come to believe any newspaper at my
+time of life. For all that, I know a fox when I see one; and what I
+say is this, that Mimi has aristocratic friends in Paris, and there
+were rogues who got news of those friends, and set out to blackmail
+them. I’ll swear as much against all the justices. ’Tis a vulgar
+crime, after all, and the truth will make it no better.
+
+This I must tell you to begin with, for ’tis a different kind of story
+which must come after. The last paragraph of this letter left me in
+the dressing-room at the château--and that’s no place for a lady. I’d
+been there about five minutes, I suppose, when Harry came roaring in,
+and hailed me with a hunting cry you could have heard away in Paris.
+Faith, the man had lost his head entirely, and when he had kissed me
+on both cheeks as the Frenchmen do, he rolled me over and over on the
+bed--though I had a clean shirt on my back--and treated me worse than
+any terrier. ’Twas “Paddy, you brick!” and “Paddy, such news!” and
+“She’s here, in the house, Paddy!” until my ears were bursting with
+it. Not a word would he let me speak, though I had a king’s message to
+bear him, and when I got down to the drawing-room at last my collar
+was up to my ears and my white choker on top of it. A fine figure of a
+man I must have looked among such company--and the Marquis bowing to
+me until his nose almost touched his boots, and Madame the Princess
+flashing a pair of eyes nearly as black and as wicked as your own. But
+there I was, and I had to make the best of it, and not a man or a
+woman would I notice until I had caught the little Greuze girl in my
+arms and squeezed her until she hollered.
+
+Well, they were all amused at this, and Madame, the Princess Hélène,
+who is one of my friends, and a great lady in Paris, she took my arm
+and led me off to the dinner-table. I had the Duchesse upon one side
+of me and the Princess upon the other; and faith, says I, what a tale
+to tell at Glendalough. Such gold and silver plate, Martha; such
+glass, such paintings! My neck aches this very day for staring up to
+the ceilings to look at the gods and goddesses dancing in the
+hayfields, and caring no more for the liquor down below than the
+archbishop at a teetotalers’ meeting. What with these bare-legged
+beauties and the great ladies and the witty talk, bedad, I could have
+been content to stop at the table a month, and to have thought twice
+about leaving it then.
+
+But this is to speak of Paddy O’Connell, and you, woman-like, will be
+all for hearing of Madame Mimi. How did she bear herself, you ask? The
+little colleen out of the cafés and the circus--how did she carry
+herself in such a place? Why, no grand dame born to it could have done
+better. Even my friend the Marquis told me so afterwards; while, as
+for the Princess, she couldn’t like the child better if she were her
+own daughter. Not one of them that does not spoil and pet her, believe
+me. I listen to their talk, and a thousand wild thoughts run in my
+head. What is Mimi to them? Why did they send to London for her? How
+comes it that ruffians would have blackmailed them?
+
+You are a discreet little body, and you will not speak of this to any
+human being; but you’ll think about it very much, Martha, as I am
+thinking about it this minute, and saying I’d be a fool not to guess
+the truth of it. And if my suppositions are true, is the child’s
+behaviour a wonder to be gaped at? You will be the first to say “no”
+to that. She has the blood of nobles in her veins, and what matter a
+jot if the bend sinister is written across her story? Let the story go
+where it will. I would be proud of it if I were Harry--and so much I
+have told him to-day.
+
+Write to me as soon as you can--when your husband is at his sermons
+should be a good opportunity--and tell me how far I am right. My own
+programme is uncertain. This lovely November weather makes life well
+enough in the glorious park about this château, and a sweet time we
+are having of it. The Marquis plays golf very well, and I am winning
+money of him. Mimi and Harry are nearly always on horseback, for he is
+teaching her to ride, and a willing pupil he has found. What is
+troubling them is the approaching trial of the man Bedotte, who, it
+seems, was Count d’Antoine’s valet, and is to be tried at St. Germain
+for the murder of the old woman Marie. I fear the public, which laps
+up a scandalous story as a dog takes water, will insist upon much
+being told which otherwise should be concealed. But we shall have the
+judge with us, for where is the lawyer born who could write unkind
+things about that beautiful woman the Princess Hélène?
+
+Rely upon me, in any case, to send you all the news. Harry is fretting
+still for his fortune, though Mimi, I hear, is to have two thousand a
+year from the Marquis. He says he means to accept an offer from the
+editor of the “Daily Bulletin” to become Paris correspondent at a
+stiffish sum, and I do believe he’ll carry out the threat. In which
+case they will have an apartment in Paris and a villa at Fontainebleau
+which he discovered the other day when in his motor-car.
+
+I’ll be a lonely man then, Martha, and glad to see you sometimes.
+Should the “Society for the Suppression of Human Emotions” determine
+to hold its meetings in London, you’ll be going there and may manage
+to let me know. In which case, an accident might find me in the great
+Metropolis also.
+
+Meanwhile, with my kind regards, believe me, dear Mrs. Warrington,
+
+                                                    Yours faithfully,
+                                                     Paddy O’Connell.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XLIV.
+
+ [Mr. James Frogg, of Serjeant’s Inn, receives an unexpected answer to
+ an expectant letter.]
+
+                                     Château de Bougival, near Paris,
+                                                  December 2nd, 1905.
+
+James Frogg, Esq.
+
+Sir,--In answer to your esteemed letter demanding to know how far the
+conditions of my revered father’s will have been observed by me, I beg
+to state:
+
+1. That they have been wholly fulfilled.
+
+2. That an agreement was signed yesterday between the editor of the
+“Daily Bulletin” and myself, in which I am engaged by him as his Paris
+correspondent for the term of one year, at a salary of seven hundred
+pounds.
+
+A copy of this agreement I beg to enclose for your inspection, and
+remain, Sir,
+
+                                                    Yours faithfully,
+                                                     Henry Gastonard.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XLV.
+
+ [Mr. James Frogg, of Serjeant’s Inn, passes on the unpleasant news to
+ the Reverend Arthur Warrington, of Beldon, Suffolk.]
+
+                                     3, Serjeant’s Inn, London, E.C.,
+                                                  December 4th, 1905.
+
+The Reverend Arthur Warrington, M.A.
+
+Reverend and dear Sir,--I have this day received the enclosed letter
+from Mr. Gastonard. Its claims, I fear, are incontestable.
+
+The Will of the late Henry Gastonard, of Bordeaux and London, provided
+that the bulk of his considerable fortune should pass from the
+possession of his only son in the case that the young man was not
+earning five hundred pounds a year by his own efforts at the age of
+twenty-five years.
+
+Such a condition, I regret to say, has now been fulfilled. The
+Agreement between Henry Gastonard and the editor of the “Daily
+Bulletin” is not a document I should advise you to contest. No court
+would question its _bona fides_; nor would any Chancery judge be
+willing to interpret the Will in any strict sense.
+
+Such are the facts. Believe me, dear Sir, that I deplore them, and am,
+
+                                               Your faithful servant,
+                                                         James Frogg.
+
+My charges in the matter of this business, £74 6s. 8d., are detailed
+in the schedule I have the honour to enclose.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XLVI.
+
+ [The Reverend Arthur Warrington receives the news and makes some
+ complaint of it.]
+
+                                       The Red Farm, Beldon, Suffolk,
+                                                  December 5th, 1905.
+
+James Frogg, Esq.
+
+Dear Mr. Frogg,--God’s will be done--though this, indeed, is dreadful
+news. That the cup should be dashed from my lips at the last moment! I
+can hardly believe my eyes while I read.
+
+Of course, this alleged contract is nothing but a trick. Would anyone
+pay seven hundred pounds a year to a youth who has lived a worthless
+life? Why, even I cannot earn a hundred pounds a year by my writings,
+and you know how voluminous they have been.
+
+I must tell you plainly that if I cannot derive some benefit under
+this Will, my affairs will be in a very bad way. The debts incurred by
+my wife at the time of that miserable and insensate pageant at
+Lowestoft still press heavily upon me and interfere with my work among
+the poor. I owe some two hundred pounds beside, chiefly to my
+publishers, who brought out my last volumes upon Athanasius and St.
+John Chrysostom. They have the indelicacy to say that there is no
+money in the Apostles. I must pay their account immediately, and also
+your own charges.
+
+Would it be possible, do you think, to find some wealthy person who
+would lend me money upon note of hand alone? I should not object to a
+reasonable rate of interest--though perhaps they would lend it to the
+Lord at a lower figure? How can a clergyman do his duty when harassed
+by debt?
+
+This is a dreadful misfortune, and I cannot contemplate it with
+equanimity. What will Henry do with his vast fortune? Oh, it is
+deplorable to think that it may be spent chiefly upon this dancing
+girl, who, I have reason to believe, is the natural daughter of a
+dissolute French nobleman. My own position is rendered more difficult
+by the fact that I have already entered into considerable engagements
+upon the supposition that nothing could deprive me of the money. And
+now Henry so far forgets his birth and tradition as to write for a
+common newspaper.
+
+Will you please to let me know what I shall have to pay by way of
+interest for a loan, say of five hundred pounds? Would fifteen per
+cent. satisfy the lender? I have some hopes of being chosen for one of
+the new canonries at Bury St. Edmunds, which is about to become a
+cathedral city. This would mean eight hundred pounds a year and a
+house, I suppose. I could pay off the money in three years.
+
+Kindly write to me without delay.
+
+                                                         Yours truly,
+                                                   Arthur Warrington.
+
+P.S.--Should you see Mrs. Warrington, I beg you will not mention to
+her the fact that I am trying to borrow money. My loss, I regret to
+say, causes her some amusement. She is going to London this week to
+support the meeting of the Society for the Suppression of the Human
+Emotions--but I have not the heart to accompany her. She would have
+gone to the Charing Cross Hotel, but she hears by accident that a very
+objectionable Irishman, who is her particular aversion, happens to be
+staying there; so she will be at the Grand. She may call upon you. Be
+discreet, I pray.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XLVII.
+
+ [Paddy O’Connell informs his sister Clara that he is detained in
+ London upon business of some importance.]
+
+                                      The Grand Hotel, Charing Cross,
+                                                 December 13th, 1905.
+
+Dear Clara,--I arrived here on Saturday night from Paris, but I didn’t
+come on to you for reasons which the great Deep can speak of, and
+especially that part of it which lies between Dover and Calais. Faith,
+every soul on board but me was sick; and nothing but the natural
+delicacy of my feelings prevented that same calamity overtaking me.
+
+I propose now to rest a few days in London. There are my stockbrokers
+to see, and some of Harry’s business to be attended to. You have heard
+by my letters and the newspapers all that has been going on in France,
+so I do no more than to tell you that Harry is hard at work already as
+a newspaper correspondent, and a mighty pretty one at that. If he
+doesn’t succeed as a newspaper man, it will be because he tells the
+truth, which is not what some of ’em in Fleet-street want at all, as I
+found out when I called John Ferguson, of the “Daily Herald,” a
+black-hearted liar. But Harry will do well, I hope; and he’s saved his
+fortune for certain.
+
+_Apropos_ of this, ’tis the oddest thing in the world, but I met Mrs.
+Warrington in this very hotel, and had some talk with her. She is a
+sensible little body, and doesn’t grudge Harry his fortune at all.
+
+“After all,” says she, “’twas his father’s money and not ours.” But I
+fear the parson man, her husband, is in a bad way about it and
+swearing like the devil. It appears that he’s been counting his
+chickens before they were hatched, and a pretty brood of blue
+envelopes have come out of the nest. I shall have to be writing to
+Harry to do something for him. ’Tis not cricket at all to be expecting
+a fool to pay the whole price of his folly, for God knows, we are no
+wiser than we were born, and that’s not very wise at all where some of
+us are concerned.
+
+I shall stay a few days in London, though I expect to be very busy all
+the time. To-night I may go to the theatre by way of relaxation; you
+wouldn’t have me kill myself with hard work, though anxious I am to
+get home to Ireland and the riding.
+
+I will just say that Harry writes to me almost every day, and is full
+of his happiness. My friend, the Princess Hélène, has gone to Corfu
+on the Marquis’s yacht, and the Duchesse de Bourg with her. Harry and
+Mimi could have the great château to themselves if they chose; but,
+will you believe it, they have gone up to the little house on the
+Butte, just to pass a day or two, they say, and to see what the old
+life was like. ’Twould be odd to hear that the little Greuze girl
+cared anything about that now, but I suppose Harry knows what he is
+doing, and he’ll have plenty of murders to send to the newspapers.
+
+Do not be at the pains to write to me, Clara. I shall be coming home
+as soon as all these lawyer men have finished with me.
+
+Meanwhile, I am, as ever, your affectionate brother,
+
+                                                               Paddy.
+
+There was a man stopped me by Charing Cross Station yesterday, and
+asked me if I could direct him to the house of the Archdeacon of
+Middlesex. I had a little talk with him, and took him afterwards to my
+hotel. ’Twas a most wonderful story he had to tell me. His cousin, it
+appears, is a prisoner, in Spain, and knows of a buried treasure near
+Cadiz. About fifty pounds will buy the man’s liberty, and he’s willing
+to share the treasure, which dates back from Columbus’ day, and is
+mostly in moidores, though all sound gold, with any man that will find
+him the money. I’m of the mind to join them. ’Twould be something to
+come home to you, Clara, with a ship full of guineas. And all for a
+paltry fifty pounds.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XLVIII.
+
+ [In which Henry Gastonard hears of Jules Farman again, and of the
+ criminal known as Bedotte the valet.]
+
+                             4 (bis), Rue du Quatre Septembre, Paris,
+                                                 February 21st, 1906.
+
+Monsieur,--I have the honour to report as follows:--
+
+The criminal Henry Bedotte Sanvalier was executed this morning on the
+public ground between the prisons of La Roquette and Les Jeunes
+Detenues.
+
+I was privileged to visit the prisoner at five o’clock and spent some
+minutes alone with him. He was entirely unrepentent, and heard with
+much satisfaction that his comrade, Gondré, the showman, had received
+a sentence of ten years’ forced labour. I have, monsieur, seen many
+men die before the gates of La Roquette, but no man more contemptuous
+of death or its sequel. Of this, however, you will read in the
+newspapers.
+
+My questions to Bedotte were few but important. I had to discover (a)
+if Madame d’Alençon had played any conspicuous part in this affair,
+and (b) under what circumstances the abduction of Madame Gastonard
+from the Convent of Orleans was safely accomplished. To both of these
+I had satisfactory answers.
+
+There was another actor in this drama, monsieur, but he is dead. I
+refer to the husband of the woman Marie, a man who had been in the
+service of the Marquis de Saint Faur, who planned the abduction of the
+child, and who hid her successfully from the police during the active
+weeks of the pursuit.
+
+Madame, your wife, is speaking but in general terms when she tells us
+that she has no clear memory of this criminal--nor might we expect it.
+But it is clear that no convent would be so conducted that children
+could pass its gates when they chose; and that if any such event had
+occurred, the police of Orleans would not have failed in their duty.
+
+No, monsieur, Madame Gastonard was cleverly kidnapped from the house
+during the hour of the children’s recreation. She was carried to the
+poorer quarter of Orleans, and there hidden for many weeks. In the
+interval an unforeseen event occurred: the husband--the man who knew
+the truth--was arrested. The old woman had but a vague notion of it;
+she carried the child away with her upon a gipsy’s journey, fell in
+with the showman Gondré, and finally sold her prize to that honest
+fellow Cassadore. And now, monsieur, the sequel becomes clearer.
+
+When you sent me to make enquiries at Orleans as to the truth of
+certain stories you had heard concerning the infancy of Madame
+Gastonard, it chanced that another was similarly occupied for a
+purpose which will be self-evident. She was Madame Lea d’Alençon,
+then posing in Paris as your friend. Her acquaintance with Count
+d’Antoine was slight, but she used it as a clever woman could to
+extort from him some confession of the truth. Possibly, although this
+could not be proved in a court of law, she herself set counter
+agencies to work. She may have betrayed the secret to the man Gondré;
+if not to him, then to the old woman Marie. The criminals themselves
+appear, upon this, to have joined forces and arrived at a
+determination to work together. They did not know where Madame
+Gastonard was to be found in London; but they followed the Count to
+her house, and there murdered him--as Bedotte declares--because he
+threatened them with the police. Their object was to blackmail the
+Marquis de Saint Faur and the Princess Hélène. But most fortunately
+this was prevented. The public may have guessed the truth; but many
+truths are guessed by the public, monsieur, and remain guesses to the
+end.
+
+Monsieur, the world forgets these things very quickly, and it will not
+be less willing to blot out this page. If it should be turned once
+more, you will have Madame d’Alençon to thank. But I shall not fail
+to frighten her, and fear is the only weapon which will silence a
+woman’s tongue. In this you may count upon me, not only in your own
+interests but in those of my esteemed patron, the Marquis de Saint
+Faur.
+
+I will add, monsieur, that a vast crowd assembled to see Sanvalier
+die, and that his death was accompanied by that brutal circumstance
+which unhappily is still favoured by our French law: the man would not
+receive the priest Abbé Falier nor permit any consolations but those
+of a glass of brandy and of a cigarette. He smoked when they had bound
+him, and the cigarette was still between his lips when the head fell.
+Such was the end of a very evil scoundrel who murdered a noble
+gentleman and deserved a fate less kind.
+
+I will add that at the moment when the knife descended and struck the
+head from the body, I heard a shout from the crowd, and perceived
+there the notorious Jean-le-Mont. This man’s release was necessary,
+but I regret it. He has returned to the old Lapin Agil on the Butte,
+where I doubt not that I shall soon have the pleasure of arresting him
+upon another account.
+
+Be assured, monsieur, of my esteem, and permit me to remain,
+
+                                               Your faithful servant,
+                                                  Jules Henry Farman.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XLIX.
+
+ [Madame Lea d’Alençon has really nothing to say; but she says it
+ charmingly as ever.]
+
+                                    The Hôtel Metropole, Monte Carlo,
+                                                 February 25th, 1906.
+
+Dear Mr. Gastonard,--I compliment you upon your self-denial. To refuse
+an invitation to dinner with your old friend! And to forbid me the
+opportunity of complimenting Madame!
+
+Surely it is not true, cher Monsieur Henry, that Madame Gastonard is
+about to return to the circus? I positively refuse to believe it. But
+the world has such a _méchante_ tongue. Tell me that it is not so.
+Indeed, the report--and your unkindness--move me to some envy. Must I
+tame the lions--at my age? Helas, the spangles do not suit me!
+
+It was good of you to come here, for now we may talk. How proud you
+must be of Madame’s success. I have even heard it said that she is
+learning to speak grammatically. How clever of her when one remembers
+the lions and the hoop! I am sure you are very, very proud!
+
+My dear husband has returned from Tunis. We were laughing together
+yesterday at your misfortune--but very kindly of course. How very
+foolish of you to amuse Paris as you did. And all for a mere woman.
+
+Ah well, as the proverb goes--_il n’y a que le matin en toutes
+choses_.
+
+                                                         Your friend,
+                                                       Lea d’Alençon.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER L.
+
+ [Mimi the Simpleton writes a brief note to Madame the Princess Hélène
+ of Ilidze and we translate it.]
+
+                               The Riviera Palace Hotel, Monte Carlo,
+                                                      March 3d, 1906.
+
+Dearest Mother,--We return to Paris to-day, and Harry says that I may
+write to you. I have wished to write so many times, but he has
+forbidden me. We are to go to Paris and then to London to see that
+great big Monsieur Paddy, who loves me.
+
+Dearest mother, there has never been anyone in my life to whom I could
+speak as I have spoken to you. All the secrets have been locked in my
+own heart, but you have shared them. When I was in Paris at the cafés
+and the circus, I knew that someone would come some day and open the
+secret place of my love. You only in all the world can do so. Many,
+many years I carried my hope with me and never dared to speak of it.
+How much, dearest mother, is a woman alone among men. We bear our
+burdens and none knows of them.
+
+Will you write to me, dearest, to the château; and I will have the
+letters sent to London, if we go there. I know that I may not see you
+often, but I will count the days until I see you again. Our jewels do
+not shine less brightly because we do not look at them, and I know
+that you think of me as your child. So often have I said she is my
+mother, and that is the sweetest word. The years were long, dearest,
+until I learned it; but I would live them all again if the end might
+be like this.
+
+Harry writes so well that they wish him to go to England. He has
+promised to go there to see his cousin, Madame Martha, who is in
+trouble. She has lost all her money and Harry is going to give her
+some, for her husband the clergyman cannot preach without money, and
+that would make the people unhappy, she says. Afterwards we wish to
+buy the Château of Marcey-le-Rideau and to go there for all our
+holidays. Harry says that he does not wish to write any more for the
+newspapers. It makes him so angry when they leave his work out and put
+someone else’s in. And it is never so good as Harry’s.
+
+Dearest mother, will you come to Marcey-le-Rideau and let me call you
+mother there? It will not be my home if you do not.
+
+All the lonely, lonely years forgotten! Dearest, will you say that
+they must never return?
+
+                                                Your loving daughter,
+                                                                Mimi.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER LI.
+
+ [Mimi and Harry write to Paddy and advise him of their approaching
+ visit to Ireland.]
+
+                                     On board the Lapin Agil, Lisbon,
+                                                      April 2d, 1906.
+
+Dear Paddy,--You have been too long without a letter, so now we are
+both writing to you.
+
+I am holding the pen and Harry is spelling the English words. That is
+why there are so many blots.
+
+Dear Mr. Paddy, we cannot go back to Paris. We went there once and
+lived for three days at the old Maison du bon Tabac. It was so
+beastly. Harry says you (meaning me) must be very young to live where
+the people have nothing to do but to say what they will do some day.
+So we have grown up and do not do it.
+
+We are now in Lisbon, where, Harry says, they used to have an
+earthquake. It has not swallowed up all the people, but there are a
+great many left. Harry says the girls are very pretty, but I do not
+think so.
+
+It is better to be on a yacht when she is standing still than when she
+is walking. I do not like the sea, but Harry says it is good for me.
+
+Please, Mr. Paddy, may we come to Ireland to see you? It was very
+naughty of you to quarrel with cousin Martha because she said you
+could not play golf. And to go back to Ireland in a huff. Of course,
+we shall say you play golf very well when we are at your castle.
+
+Harry has bought the Château of Marcey-le-Rideau, and we are to
+descend there in the summer. One room is to be called Mr. Paddy’s
+room. Harry says it shall be very big, so that you can beat the floor
+with the golf clubs. He is building a little house in the grounds
+which we have named the Maison du bon Tabac. You may smoke there, Mr.
+Paddy, when you are angry and cannot get out of the bunker.
+
+We met Madame Lea at Monte Carlo, and I did not bow to her. She has
+grown so ugly and has fallen in love with her husband. _Ah, mes
+enfants!_ What would happen to people if they were to fall in love
+with their husbands!
+
+At Cintra, which is a very beautiful mountain near here, we met an
+American lady, who, Harry says, is an heiress. You should come out and
+marry her. Perhaps she would fall in love with you afterwards.
+
+But I will not have anybody falling in love with Mr. Paddy. He is my
+friend. I wish him to die as a bachelor. Harry says he will do it, so
+I am happy.
+
+Please say if we may come to your castle. The yacht will take us, but
+I shall go upon the railway line.
+
+                                                   Your affectionate,
+                                                                Mimi.
+
+P.S.--Say if it’s convenient, old chap? Don’t for heaven’s sake turn
+your good sister out to grass, or anything of that sort. Just a bed
+and a crust, with a pipe and a whisky afterwards. It will be enough to
+see you, old Brian Boru. And God bless you, anyway.
+
+ THE END.
+
+
+
+
+ TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
+
+The Bernhard Tauchnitz edition (Leipzig, 1910) was consulted for many
+of the changes listed below.
+
+Cyrus Cuneo provided the frontispiece.
+
+Minor spelling inconsistencies (e.g. Chatelet/Châtelet, music
+halls/music-halls, tiptoe/tip-toe, etc.) have been preserved.
+
+Alterations to the text:
+
+Punctuation fixes: some quotation mark pairings, and some missing
+periods and commas. Also, adjust some of the letterheads’ location
+lines to end with a comma.
+
+Change four instances of Mr. _Fogg_ to _Frogg_.
+
+[Chapter I]
+
+Change “lunch in a frock coat and glory with Lea _d’ Alençon_” to
+_d’Alençon_.
+
+[Chapter V]
+
+“The suspicion that this chit of the _fétes_ foraines may yet startle”
+to _fêtes_.
+
+[Chapter IX]
+
+“but you will not have come here for the _fish ing_, perhaps?” to
+_fishing_.
+
+[Chapter XII]
+
+“bears witness once more to the smallness of this _terrestial_ globe”
+to _terrestrial_.
+
+[Chapter XVI]
+
+“for _litttle_ Martha insisted on shewing me the greenhouses” to
+_little_.
+
+[Chapter XIX]
+
+“the house which their old comrade Mimi _wil_ not enter” to _will_.
+
+[Chapter XXVIII]
+
+“Is it dreams, or _is_ spirits about?” to _are_.
+
+[Chapter XXXIV]
+
+“She posed _lanquidly_ and watched me with some cunning” to
+_languidly_.
+
+[Chapter XLIX]
+
+(letter signature) Change Lea _d’Alencon_ to _d’Alençon_.
+
+[End of text]
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78976 ***